I first made this observation back on Feb. 17, and I confess I did so figuring it would unleash a veritable firestorm from veteran Knicks fans who protect the team’s history — specifically the history of 1969-73 — the way the King’s Guard defends Buckingham Palace. But I said it anyway.
I said that the Knicks’ acquiring Hart was already looking like the most impactful transaction for them since Dave DeBusschere on Dec. 19, 1968. You link any 21st Century Knick to the sainted gallery of champions, you do so at your own risk — especially for someone who, on Feb. 17, was only in his seventh full day as a Knick, and had played exactly three games as a Knick.
I girded myself for the blowback. I wrote this disclaimer very high and very prominently as I made my case: “What follows should IN NO WAY be interpreted as an argument that Josh Hart is Dave DeBusschere. Let’s get that out of the way here, and repeat it for extra emphasis: Josh Hart IS NOT Dave DeBusschere.”
But a funny thing happened.
There wasn’t one negative retort. No kidding. Not one. And in fact as the responses came in that day, and in the days to come, even Knicks fans of that vintage were happy to report: “Yep. It feels exactly the same.”
And now here we are.
Now, we have Hart, with seven playoff games under his belt, five of them when he’s had a plus/minus rating in the plus category and these numbers as his stat line: 11.7 points, 8.3 rebounds, 2.9 assists, 1.0 steals, shooting 50 percent from the field. The Knicks are 5-2 in those games which follows, because after acquiring Hart on Feb. 9 they went 17-8.
Tuesday, in the Knicks’ heart-pumping 111-105 season-saving win over Miami, Hart’s tour de force — 14 point, 11 rebounds, nine assists — marked the first time the Knicks had come that close to a playoff triple-double since the last of Clyde Frazier’s four such masterpieces in Game 1 of the ’72 NBA Finals against the Lakers.
He doesn’t do any one thing better than everyone on the Knicks, but he does multiple things better than just about any of them. He was a winning player in college, at Villanova, who spent his first 5 ½ years in the NBA wandering from Los Angeles to New Orleans to Portland looking for a place that reminded him of his salad days on the Main Line. On Feb. 9, that connection was made.
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And now, here we are.
“We talk about playmaking ability, and the assists, the big 3s, the rebounds, the defense,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Those things are unselfish and they’re winning plays.”
Most of the time, when a team makes an impactful in-season acquisition, that player provides in-your-face examples, every day, of that effect. When the Mets picked up Yoenis Cespedes in 2015, for instance, he began hitting bombs and really never stopped, so much so that he actually finished 13th in the National League MVP vote — the highest finisher of the NL-pennant-winning team — despite playing only 57 games.
Hart hasn’t been that. If you want to look for a similar acquisition elsewhere, it might be best to go back 43 years, to when the Islanders picked up Butch Goring on March 10, 1980, from the LA Kings. Goring played only 12 regular-season games but he made an immediate impact — six goals, five assists — and then became an essential element to a Stanley Cup dynasty, winning the Conn Smythe Trophy in ’81.
But Goring wasn’t the best player on the Islanders when he showed up, and he really wasn’t one of the five best for most of his five years on Long Island. But he was the perfect complementary player, the perfect lunch-pail guy to work with the Bryan Trottiers, the Mike Bossys, the Denis Potvins, the Clark Gillies.
DeBusschere is a forever piece of the Knicks’ firmament, but as great as he was, he was never Clyde, never Willis Reed, never even Earl Monroe. But just by showing up he made the team around him better. Same deal with Hart. He was the perfect guy to bring off the bench to acclimate himself to his new surroundings, and Madison Square Garden picked up on that right away.
Now he starts, and will probably stay there for as long as the Knicks’ season survives, and he’s become an essential part of that unit, too. Winning players do things like that.
“[My game] is to have fun, to play carefree basketball,” Hart said. “You know, obviously there are going to be times when I turn down some shots, times when I shoot it. But doing that I’m really able to play the style of basketball that I want to play.”
It’s a style the Garden was happy to adopt from the first time the regulars laid eyes on him. Maybe he’s not Dave DeBusschere, that disclaimer still applies. But he’s certainly DeBusscherian. And that’s saying plenty.
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