With a gigantic second-half performance against the Boston Celtics on Thursday night, Josh Hart vindicated Mike Brown for keeping him in the starting lineup throughout a tumultuous season.
Hart scored 26 points in the game, shooting 10-15 from the floor and making 5-7 of his 3-point attempts. Two of those makes from distance were pivotal to the game's final result, with the 30-year-old's big-time shots locking up a big-time win for the New York Knicks.
Hart rewards Brown's faith amid up-and-down campaign
As easy as it is to point to the way defenses cover Hart as one of the primary reasons for a seeming lack of synergy between Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, the Swiss Army knife tends to get hot when the lofty expectations of the postseason are looming over his squad.
Brown started off his tenure with the Knicks by making a move that technically wasn't a move at all. He left the starting lineup in place that the team had finished out the previous postseason with, which included center Mitchell Robinson starting over do-it-all swingman Josh Hart.
At what Brown said was the guidance of Assistant Coach Rick Brunson, though, the Knicks went back to their usual ways and replaced Robinson with Hart. The longest-tenured Knick's load management plan made his availability consistently inconsistent, making it hard to start him over a player that's typically available.
When Hart himself wasn't available, Miles McBride got some run with the opening lineup. But even though he played well, he was immediately assigned back to the bench as soon as the Villanova product had gotten back to being at full health.
The biggest problem consistently presented by Hart's presence in the starting lineup is far from an indictment on Hart as a player, or playoff-capable starter. It's simply that, when the swingman isn't making (or even taking) many shots from behind the 3-point arc, it incentivizes opponents to have their centers guard him.
That enables them to guard Towns with a wing, typically a quicker, more athletic player than a traditional center that KAT has trouble blowing by as a result.
When Hart gets in his playoff mode, though, he smacks in 3-pointers in the biggest moments of some of his team's biggest games of the year. That's the version of him that New York fans had the pleasure of watching on their home court on Thursday night against a divisional rival.