The Josh Hart trade: What it means for the Knicks

A move that brings clarity to the Knicks’ present-day and their future

The New York Knicks traded their 2023 first-round pick (top-14 protected) and Cam Reddish for Villanova alum Josh Hart. In a week when names like Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Mikal Bridges were dealt, acquiring Hart may not seem like the most monumental move in the world. But make no mistake, this trade reveals what the Knicks’ front office thinks about this current team and, finally, sets them on a single path. Over the next thousand words I will try to unfold who Josh Hart is as a player, what he means to this franchise for the rest of this season and the path I believe his arrival sets the Knicks on. Let’s dive in.

If you were sculpting a role player wing for head coach Tom Thibodeau . . . well, he’d probably be Reggie Bullock. But a close second would be Josh Hart. 

Hart brings multiple skill sets the Knicks are desperately lacking. It’s as if Leon Rose watched the first 56 games, deciphered what is missing from this roster, and found it all in one player. The Knicks are a slow, stagnant team that struggles on the defensive glass, particularly its bench. Hart thrives in transition, is an active screener and is one of the best rebounding wings in the NBA. This season he’s scooping up over 20% of available defensive rebounds, an absolutely outrageous number for someone 6-foot-4.

Stylistically, Hart should have no trouble fitting in. He is the type of role player that is likely to thrive regardless of the team construction or scheme, because it is extremely difficult to suppress his type of contribution. Put more succinctly: he does not need the ball in his hands to contribute to winning basketball. But make no mistake, Hart can operate with the ball in his hands. Compared to other Knicks guards and wings, he’s going to look a lot more like Quentin Grimes than Immanuel Quickley or RJ Barrett. Hart will be in the corners and attack close-outs more than he’ll initiate possessions. One wrinkle I hope the Knicks delve into is using Hart as a primary screener, as he’s a great decision-maker on the short roll and is extremely comfortable navigating the trees in the paint. 

Isolated purely for who Hart is as a basketball player and what he’ll bring to the 2023 Knicks, this deal is a home run for the team. Hart and Thibodeau will fit like peanut butter and jelly. At the same time, Hart shouldn’t interfere with the positive youth movement the Knicks have seen through 56 games, specifically Grimes and Quickley. Deuce McBride, who has shown flashes the past couple of weeks, will likely return to being a situational player, but if Hart takes Deuce’s minutes and the massive playing time Barrett and Jalen Brunson have been getting is reeled in a little bit, that’s 20-plus minutes off the bat. 

But no acquisition occurs in a vacuum. This move has unavoidable long-term ramifications. For starters, Hart’s arrival must trigger the creativity clause in Thibodeau’s contract that we have not seen yet. It is reasonable to assume that Julius Randle, Obi Toppin, and two of Mitchell Robinson, Isaiah Hartenstein and Jericho Sims will soak up all 96 of the big man minutes going forward. This leaves 144 minutes for the remaining five rotation players – Brunson, RJ, Quickley, Grimes and Hart. Make no mistake about it, Thibodeau is going to want to play Hart. As he should: the Portland Trailblazers were a whopping 8.9 points per 100 possessions better when Hart played than when he sat, best on the team. The question is, how do the Knicks fudge the rotation to get all five players their deserved minutes?

The first domino that has to fall is Thibodeau needs to commit to trusting Quickley as the backup point guard. Quickley has been getting good playing time recently (33.6 MPG in his last 20 games), but most of that has been backing up Grimes and Barrett. Brunson is still playing entire quarters. If that continues, Quickley’s minutes will see a sharp decline, because Hart is now in the mix to take some of those minutes when Barrett isn’t on the court. I promise you the Knicks did not trade a first-round pick for Hart to play the McBride role.

But Thibodeau shifting the rotation so that Brunson comes off the floor when he pulls the starting center (typically around the 4-5 minute mark), makes for much easier staggering. Quickley and Hart’s ability to play multiple positions is extremely helpful in this regard. They can enter for Brunson and Grimes but stay on the court next to them as well. These five can play together in any combination of three. We’ve seen them go as small as Brunson-Quickley-Grimes, but Quickley-Hart-Barrett is now a viable option as well. It’s up to Thibodeau to mix and match to not only make sure all five are getting meaningful playing time, but also see which combinations are the best. We don’t know the answers for sure; it’s on Thibodeau to ask the questions.

Long-term, this locks the Knicks on a path forward that is a good one. We’ve been begging the  front office to stop trying to have their cake and eat it too because the result, as we saw in 2021-22, is that often you get neither. If the Knicks were never going to embrace a full rebuild, then they need to just accept that and commit to trying to win.

Not only have the Knicks seemingly done that, but they’ve done so in a way that maximizes their flexibility. Some may be reading this and (correctly) thinking, “Wait a minute, they’re going to extend Hart and Quickley? Putting them way over the cap? How do they have flexibility?” This is a good question with a very simple answer: free agency is dead. Cap space is (almost) irrelevant these days. The treasure of the NBA is good contracts and draft capital. If the Knicks extend Hart and Quickley, they will be operating well over the cap, but they will be chock full of both good contracts and draft capital. The Knicks could very well open 2023-24 with nine rotation pieces on +EV (expected value) contracts, and 10-plus valued picks over the next six drafts. Oh yeah, they also have the Dallas Mavericks’ pick in this year’s draft. Need I remind you how successful this front office has been with late first-round picks?

What does this mean? It means that when the next star the Knicks covet becomes available, they’ll be ready to pull the trigger. A big argument against trading for Donovan Mitchell was that the Knicks weren’t ready. Adding Mitchell would have diminished their asset chest all to end up a middling team in the Eastern Conference. But the Knicks finally have positioned themselves to make *the* move in a way that isn’t going all-in. The next star the Knicks acquire will not be asked to save this franchise; no, he’ll be seen as the final piece of the puzzle. This is the path that acquiring Josh Hart has, finally, set the franchise down. It’s the path Leon Rose has been building towards for almost three years.