You’ll Be in My Hart: A Valentine for everyone’s favorite Knicks guard

An ode to Josh Hart, who is playing (and posting) his way into being all of New York’s Valentine.

It’s All-Star weekend, the Knicks are a threat looming near the top of the East — despite not moving on the insurance veteran big I hope the team won’t desperately need in a few months — but on Valentine’s Day, love is in the air here in New York. There is so much in the world, and in Dallas, to be upset about, but today is a day dedicated to the most optimistic of human notions, so I’m taking a post from the grid of my favorite professional athlete, a man who pursues his passions and holds tight to his joy wherever he finds it, which he shares freely with us. So this is a mash note I’ve scribbled for a player, comedian, critic, and singular thinker I care for deeply, who has been a source of nothing but light in my life both on and off court for the past two years, following our anniversary just last week. But beyond my schoolgirl crushing, he’s a figure I would contend represents a future for sports media, a next generation of this thing of ours that retains a remixed spirit of the weird fun I mourned in my prior eulogy. I am of course referring to Tom Thibodeau’s positionless, joyous Universal Soldier, Jalen Brunson’s second mic on the Roomates podcast, professional sports’ ultimate Commanders, Yankees, and Chelsea fan, the wine snob, the QTing arsonist, the NBA’s funniest asshole and God’s perfect poster: Josh Hart.

I have some sympathy for front-office decision-makers who first passed on Hart in the 2017 NBA draft (drafted 30th in the first round), as well as the GMs in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Portland, the cities Josh Hart stopped at between 2017-2022 before at last arriving home on Feb. 8, 2023. He came through Ellis Island by way of what could charitably be referred to as a “trade” but with hindsight would be more accurately described as a “mugging.” Those previous franchises were right in what I’d imagine their read on Hart was, a reflection of his pre-draft scouting report: An undersized and underskilled wing who is easier to understand as an exceedingly competent, Jay Wright-educated four-year college basketball player than an NBA difference maker. 51 games into the season when Portland traded him he was shooting 30% from three, and even now, his is a shot that can come and go (he hilariously shot nearly 52% from 3 for the rest of that season on the Knicks). He is a willing ball handler and passer if not a particularly gifted one. He’s fast and strong, but not notably so. In nearly every respect, in this game full of specialists and freaks, he’s a hardhat everyman, the exact mean on a graph of everyone in the NBA, the average player you use as a control when trying to assess the value of “superior” players if you’re only going off what he looks like.

What these assessments lack are poetry, imagination and vision. Because Hart is far more than his touch or his measurables. He is the human embodiment of will, of passion, of using every sense you have to gain an advantage, win games, and win over teammates and fans. Ever since he got to the Knicks and found a coach who agrees that scheduled rest is a scam concocted by babies and charlatans, he’s taken every ounce of liberty from the benches he was confined to elsewhere, a pig rolling in the filth of unlimited playing time, beside himself that he can finally stay on the court as long as he wants.

He’ll play with the same intensity every minute of every game starting in preseason practice and running through Game 7 of the Finals if his body isn’t severely impaired — and I mean literally some part of him would have to be broken for him to sit out. He’s a sneaky threat to log a triple-double every night without points necessarily being the stat he has the most of. He’s a magnet for the loose ball, the rare player who genuinely, really, actually guards 1-5, the guy who will come up with a chasedown block on a player faster and taller than he is with a headstart, the guy who will tip the most routine and untippable of rotational passes at the exact moment the Knicks need it for a breakaway slam.

On paper, Hart is a “type of guy” I have a natural affinity for and always will. I think for fans of the league who don’t watch him every night it’s easy to denigrate him as a fundamentals and flop sweat player, a coach’s son type who lacks the athletic gifts that distinguish the elite from the very good in the NBA, but it’s a disservice to Josh and the things that make him unique in the history of the league. Hart is an outlier himself, quite possibly the greatest “glue guy” the NBA has ever seen.

For sure, he dives into the crowd to save a possession and will push the pace when everyone else is tired and would rather walk the ball into a halfcourt set. But there is no precedent for a Jerome “Junkyard Dog” Williams or Renaldo Balkman who threatens triple-doubles every night and receives legitimate All-Star reserve chatter, because there is no precedent for an energy guy averaging 40 minutes per game. There are a few reasons for this. It shouldn’t be humanly possible to maintain the physical and mental intensity Josh’s style of play demands for entire games over the chasm of an entire season. That consistency equals conditioning and health, partially found in the gym and partially found at birth, which is part of the equation, but he also has a few extra-sensory talents that don’t translate to a scouting report.

I previously referred to Hart’s pedigree, playing four years for Jay Wright at Villanova, often a red letter that tells the league you’ll never make it as a pro because you either weren’t ready to play basketball on the highest level on Earth by the age of 19, or you made the long money decision that your game needed seasoning. Josh is the counter-argument, because like his college teammate Jalen, one of his superpowers is he always makes the right decision, whether he’s tagging on a P&R just long enough to take the pass away then closing on the shooter, or finding the open man in space. That “ball magnet” quality I alluded to earlier isn’t a magical property. It’s an indicator of a chessmaster who can read the ball off the rim with Rodmanesque fluency. Who is aware of where the ball is at all times, but also of his coverage and yours and where every player on the floor is and what they’re trying to do and where they’re heading if the play breaks down. He navigates space expertly, with or without the ball, cutting on offense, rotating on defense. This is how you give the impression of being everywhere, by always being exactly where you need to be. That’s special.

But what really sets Josh apart is the winking, performative smirk always on his face. The assumption — based on the cliched description of him as a type of stereotypical everyman player — is their lack of size or strength or skill forces them to play, and behave in this near frenzied state of joyless, manic intensity. Take Thibs, the coach who found his perfect avatar in Hart. He’s a dour zealot, a fascist war hawk, scowling at the refs and screaming at his bench whether he’s up or down 30.

Hart, the self-described “Polite Asshole”, breaks with this time-honored cliche. He’s always having fun — even if the wry comments and sideways looks that come with playing with this air of levity have earned him a team-high eight techs this year — and toggles quickly and seamlessly between his moments of intensity before the whistle is blown and his lighthearted ease immediately afterwards. He’s an Olivier in a room full of annoying method actors. It’s a quality that carries through all his media, from his headline-making and lmao-inducing pressers, to his gig as a podcaster, to his sarcastic posts, QTs and replies. He’s an open and unabashed spouter of opinions and tossed-off comments who contains multitudes. Hart both plays and posts with a kind of palpable, earnest wonder and joy, a relatability that anticipates you reading his Tweets and thinking “Josh fucking Hart! If I was in the NBA, I’d post like this too.” Which is of a piece with his canny brilliance, reading his audience like a loose ball. Each Jayden Daniels touchdown is a miracle, each Chelsea yellow card is devastating, each back rim rebound he has to chase down shoulder to shoulder with Walker Kessler is the first, most important, most interesting, and eventually most rewarding rebound that has ever been pursued then secured.

Hart reminds us that social media isn’t all bad, and why we fell for it in the first place. How it allows its most talented users to convey a knowability, an interiority that benefits posters who can convincingly present as a good hang, which helps when it appears by all accounts they probably are. During the Knicks season Hart posts mainly about ongoing games across sports (including fairly regular ticket giveaways) with an urgency and immediacy that jumps through the screen, and can sometimes even lead to hilarious misinterpretations:

But his best material is the irreverent, posting bottles of Paolo Bea at dinner with his wife on his stories, along with the light-hearted jabs he throws at his teammates and friends. Jalen Brunson is the most important player on the Knicks. Karl-Anthony Towns is the most talented. But Josh Hart sets the culture. In his selflessness, in his toughness, in his style of play, in his attention to detail, and in his interpersonal sensibility. It’s the deadpan provocative jab, the ongoing bit amongst best friends that they can’t stand each other that lasts a lifetime. It’s a warmth and camaraderie, a generousness of spirit that can be found in both an outlet pass and a “just fucking with you” shot taken at a former beloved teammate. Josh Hart defines his team.

There has been an unbearable deluge of NBA hand-wringing this year over ratings downturns, and critics who don’t seem to have a firm grasp on the evolution of content and how kids are receiving it amongst certain classes in certain parts of the world, who wonder how and why the league has, in their eyes, lost a measure of its cultural grip. I think it’s mostly bullshit, and the explosion of interest around the trade deadline and Christmas Day suggest as much. But one theory that has been floated as a potential impetus for this shift — and one that I find some truth in — is a take from Wosny “Big Wos” Lambre of the Ringer: That in molded-from-birth/AAU animatronic Disney World greeter celebrities like Jayson Tatum, the league and its players have become too media-trained and stage-managed. That there is a disconnect between the league and its fans because these young, cautious billionaires are so aware conservatives buy sneakers too and don’t want to ruffle any feathers, or are simply trying to avoid being taken out of context and roasted by the online hoards over an ill-phrased pull quote graphic. The fans can smell the insincerity wafting off you. They may respect your game, but they will never fall in love.

Josh Hart is the antidote to this plague of hyper-awareness. He is a master of the art of representing his authentic self through all lenses. And this is not done through being the breed of firebombing provocateur hot take spewer clogging your feed, which is just as annoying and dishonest as the milquetoast hyphenate athlete/corporate interest. He is simply unabashedly, and unapologetically, himself. It’s why there is no limit to where Hart takes his career after he’s done playing and I’d believe anything. If he should choose to throw his life away in media he could be an actual, legitimate successor to King Charles, or he could follow his passion and grab a mic for Monday Night Football, or become a Premier League podcaster, or star in his own sitcom (Hart and Soul? Wild Harts? Open Harts? Chuck Lorre, I’m available for a brainstorm lunch), or rebrand as a Peloton instructor with a rabid following, it’s all on the table. It’s why if I had to, and could choose the part of the body in which I was getting shot, and have immediate access to treatment, I, and every New Yorker like me, would take a bullet for Josh Hart.

Three weeks ago, the Knicks returned to the scene of this iteration of the team’s greatest triumph: Philadelphia. It’s a city where, shorthanded, they won an ugly, beautiful series in 2024 against the 76ers that many astute critics and league commentators have correctly identified as the best matchup we saw in a lackluster postseason’s Eastern side of the bracket. If you could explain a human being through six games of playoff basketball, it was a series that embodied Hart’s talent, heart and iron will.

On that night in Philly, a nationally televised game in mid-January, the game went to OT in an eventual hard-fought victory and Jalen Brunson was his baseline of casual brilliance for this season, pouring in 38 points in 45 minutes. He would’ve led the team in minutes if it wasn’t for Hart, who was 35 seconds shy of an even 50, and logged a preposterous statline he’s also made routine: 10 points, 17 rebounds, and 12 assists. Brunson got the glory, the postgame interview, will start in the All-Star game this year and get the MVP consideration for the Knicks at the end of the season, and it’s all well deserved. But as he tried to deliver some bland postgame athlete aphorisms, Josh Hart darted into view briefly, grabbing his ass and eliciting the blend of genuine and affected aggravation and affection that is the dominant tenor of this team, how they express themselves and relate to one another.

The facade of Brunson’s buttoned-up ESPN interview demeanor briefly fell away as he appealed to Cassidy Hubbarth, “This guy’s a clown, dog”, to which she responded “He may be a clown, but he makes winning plays. I need you to try to say something nice about Josh because he was all over the place. His fifth triple-double of the season. How do you see, for a long time now, all the way back to your Villanova days, how he contributes to winning?” Brunson shook his head, smiled and replied, “He’s been doing it ever since I met him, he just finds a way every single night. It pains me to compliment him, but it’s what he does.”