Every GM in the NBA watches the scrappy, versatile, two-way game of Josh Hart and sees a player that can help their team. Especially the way he has helped lift up these Knicks in the postseason.
Hart is expected to be a free agent this summer. He has a $12.9 million player option, but he will make more than that on the market — $17-18 million a year to start? — and grab the security of a multi-year contract.
That has other teams drooling at the chance to snap him up, right? Yes. But then reality hits them, reports Marc Stein in his newsletter.I have yet to encounter a single team that believes Hart will be gettable.
The CAA-repped swingman’s eventual deal to re-sign with the Knicks and a front office helmed by CAA alumnus Leon Rose is more often referred to be rivals as inevitable.
There may be no more Thibodeau player on the Knicks roster than Hart; you know where the coach’s loyalties lie.Hart also sounds like a guy who wants to stay in New York. Here is what he told Marc Spears of ESPN’s Andscape a few months ago.
“I want bigger things for my wife and myself,” Hart said. “Just find a home somewhere where we are valued and really like living there. And I think that can be New York. I would love for it to be New York and hopefully the organization feels the same way. Coming up, this contract is hopefully my biggest one, one where I’m making sure my family’s fully taken care of. So, I’ve also got to take that into account, too.”
That was not very subtle code that he wants to stay with the Knicks but there will be no discount. Hart was on a minimum-level contract his first three years in the league and only in the past two years has his salary jumped up slightly above league-average money. He hasn’t gotten paid big by NBA standards and he’s not letting this opportunity pass.
Just expect that to come to pass in New York.
