NEW YORK — Josh Hart has announced his decision. Then he did it.
Then he made another one. There is another one. There is another one. There is another one.
After struggling with the Cleveland Cavaliers’ defensive cross-matching in Game 1 – a game plan premised on putting a center on him, letting him drop and barely daring him to shoot in favor of the Knicks’ interior offense – Hart found himself a bystander in the final seconds of the game, watching from the sidelines as head coach Mike Brown and Landry Shamet put together a five-shooter lineup to try to get the New York Knicks out of a 22-point deficit. The holes they dug. The move worked: Shamet’s entrance started a historic comeback for the Knicks.
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But while Hart preached with extreme humility about approaching the game without ego when asked about it during a practice session in New York between Games 1 and 2, he’s also a very proud pro — the kind of guy who isn’t very good at or willing to accept disrespect.
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“They’re probably going to do the same thing,” Hart said of the Cavaliers’ game plan for Game 2. “I’m going to shoot the same shot. I’m going to shoot it with confidence. I’m going to play my game.”
That’s what Hart did on Thursday, continuing to hammer away at the rock until he finally collapsed — he scored a career playoff-high 26 points, 5-for-11 from 3-point range and seven assists — until the Cavaliers broke it open and the Knicks won 109-93 to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.
As predicted, the Cavaliers did open the second drive on the same crossover play, with Jarrett Allen playing just a few yards from Hart on the outside. And Hart, as promised, did come out aggressive, scoring his first three-pointer of the night on OG Anunoby’s kickoff and kick less than 90 seconds into the game. Two minutes later, Anunoby again took the ball from the opposite corner. On the third goal two minutes later, after a dribble handoff with Jalen Brunson sliding to his left, Allen once again left him alone.
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The problem: He missed all three points, and while Allen continued to clog the paint and take away Brunson’s driving lanes, the Cavaliers took the lead again in Game 2, taking an early 17-11 lead. The slow start prompted a brief but clear chant of “LANDRY SHAMET!” from the Madison Square Garden faithful; it also prompted a brief moment of self-flagellation from a visibly frustrated Hart.
“I don’t know if he can say what he says to himself out loud,” Karl-Anthony Towns joked to reporters.
But Hart persisted. He trusted the work Knicks shooting coach Peter Patton did all season, which allowed him to shoot a career-high 41.3 percent from 3-point range in the regular season before starting the 2026 postseason with a dismal 12-for-48 shooting from long range. He made a quick jump shot out of bounds from the baseline, and accelerated the tempo in transition between offense and defense, setting up Towns for a layup, helping the team narrow the gap to 20-19 in the middle of the first quarter.
Hart sets screens and takes dribble handoffs in an attempt to free up minutes on his teammates. He played physical, aggressive, all-out defense against Donovan Mitchell. He uses the space Allen gives him as a running lane, and when he gets the ball and has a chance to drive, he attacks the rim hard. As promised, he continued to play and continued to contribute to the Knicks’ lead late in the second quarter.
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Then, with 3:27 left in the first half, the dam finally broke when an aggressive drive up the middle by old friend Mikal Bridges set up another catch-and-shoot corner 3-pointer. He delivered again three minutes later, knocking down a shot from the left slot off a bullet from Brunson, who also fed Hart a fast-break dunk shortly after halftime — part of what appeared to be a series of efforts by the Knicks captain to get his friend off Schneider, despite Brunson’s postgame disapproval.
“I mean, I really didn’t want to go to him,” Brunson said with a laugh. “He just happened to be open. So I gave it to him.”
Hart repaid that confidence in the third quarter, hitting two more three-pointers and launching an 18-0 run to open the game.
“You know, obviously, if they continue to leave him open, he’s got to continue to let the ball fly,” Brown said after the game. “I think he was 0-for-3 on his first three 3-pointers and he’s 5-for-8 after that. So we want him to keep shooting. If he’s steady on his feet, if Jarrett Allen wants to make plays in the paint, just shoot them and then we’ll figure out the rest of the game.”
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The Knicks’ ability to solve problems quickly once again put Cavaliers head coach Kenny Atkinson in trouble, and his pragmatic process and sound game plan were torn apart by a high-level Knicks team.
“You have to pick your poison — that’s what the playoffs are about, right?” Atkinson said. “You have to choose the players you need help with, so those are the choices you make in the playoffs.”
In Game 1, Atkinson opted to have Brunson hunt down James Harden constantly in the fourth quarter until eventually Brunson carved up the Cavaliers enough that the coach started double-teaming… which the Knicks quickly burned on drives, 3-pointers and free throws. In Game 2, he doubled down on trying to limit Brunson — the Cavaliers held him to just two points on 1-of-6 shooting in the first half and nine points on 4-of-12 shooting throughout the three quarters — and force the NBA’s best guard to move the ball elsewhere.
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The result: Brunson had a career playoff-high 14 assists, all five Knicks starters were in double figures, Hart turned out to be the Ghost nemesis, and New York finished the game with a 123.9 offensive rating — a mark that would lead the NBA in regular-season offensive rating.
“Obviously, he’s an NBA player and he can shoot 3-pointers,” Allen said, and Hart eventually found a way to take advantage of Allen. “You just have to follow the statistics, you have to follow the coach’s trust and intuition. Sometimes, it just… the plan doesn’t go as planned.”
The Cavaliers did not perform well on Thursday, shooting a terrible 38.8% from the field, 9 of 35 three-pointers, and missed 10 free throws. Their defensive plan was broken again. After missing a steal in Game 1, they’re back in a familiar but uncomfortable position: trailing their favorite opponent 2-0, just as they were heading into Game 3 against Detroit in the previous round.
“In the playoffs, you live between pain and excitement,” Atkinson said during a Cavs walkthrough between Games 1 and 2 on Wednesday. “Of course, that’s the pain.”
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They believe the shots they produce will start to fall, and they believe their process will lead to better results. They probably also didn’t believe they were going to see Hart knock down a few more 3-pointers and some of the other things he did on his career night.
“Sometimes you’ve got to give it a try,” said Mitchell, who scored a Cavaliers-high 26 points on 8-for-18 shooting. “I’m not comparing players, but you’ve seen similar situations in other series. [Alex] Caruso, they guarded him the same way. I’m not saying it’s him or anything or vice versa, but you have to adapt. We’ll watch the film and figure out how to adjust. But sometimes you have to tip your hat. I mean, he did a one-handed spin move on me. “
“We obviously abandoned some of the others [to slow down Brunson]they made shots,” Atkinson said after Game 2. “In this league, you have to accept these things. “
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If you’re Brown, you have to live with the ups and downs of Hart’s shooting. Because, like Mitchell’s game plan reference point, Caruso – let’s be honest, if the NBA had an All-Make S*** Happen team, Caruso and Hart would be perennial first-team players – and while Hart’s flaws may complicate your game plan when he’s at his lowest, his strengths can also make the entire team cheer when he’s at his peak.
“I mean, [Hart] It just affects the game,” Towns said. “He affects winning. You heard me say similar things many times in the post-game press conference. He’s the perfect role model for any basketball player who wants to learn how to truly impact their team’s winning, and you know, he does it at the highest level. […] When he goes out there, he plays hard and plays hard and you know, you feel like you have to keep up with his intensity. Because of him, when he shows that energy on the floor, it lifts our whole team up and makes us feel like we have to be where he is on the floor. “
On nights like this, Hart is almost everywhere on the floor, energizing and strengthening both ends of the floor for the Knicks, quietly and loudly. Brown has some experience in this area, which is a brand contribution.
“I’ll tell you this: My time with Andre Iguodala in Golden State helped a lot,” Brown said. “Because, you know, they’re different players, but they’re similar players because Andre is also very edgy and Andre is a hell A player’s. I mean, he’s a great player and he does a lot of little things that you don’t appreciate if you’re not careful. So does Josh. He does a lot of little things that don’t show up in the statistics. “
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Brown learned that sometimes, if you want to reap the rewards of Hart’s maximalist, electric play, you have to be willing to deal with some stray voltages.
“The bottom line is, because he’s so influential as a liaison, I have to give him more of a leash than anyone else,” Brown said. “I have to let him be himself and stay out of his way.”
Brown helped Hart stay connected in defeat by giving him that space — choosing to be happy, relax, and trust that the next one will come in. Even if that annoying, nosy voice in his head was cursing him with every jingle.
“You know, I don’t really celebrate when I score or make a good pass or something like that, and I probably kick myself too much when I miss a shot or turn it over and stuff like that,” Hart said. “I think I’m starting to learn how to play the game and give myself more grace and not try to be perfect. And, you know, I’m happy with that.”
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The Knicks don’t need Josh Hart to be perfect. They need him to be Josh Hart – a guy who cheers from the bench when the team needs it, a guy who keeps shooting when the team needs it, a guy who plays the best game of his playoff career when the team needs two wins in the Finals.
“As a coach, it’s hard sometimes. Because you’re looking at the X’s and O’s, you want everything to be perfect, you’re looking at the box score, you’re looking at this,” Brown said. “With Josh, with Andre, all that shit should be thrown out the window. Because those guys are Winner“.
