Josh Hart Is Killing the Cavs Softly

The Knicks swingman helped bottle up Cavaliers star guard Donovan Mitchell in Game 4 and has proved to be a perfect fit for this New York team.

While it’s certainly not the same as being without a star scorer for a key playoff game, Tom Thibodeau’s reality late Sunday morning—that he was going to be without injured Knicks wing stopper Quentin Grimes—was a tough one. Despite Grimes’s youth, he was the guy Thibodeau planned to have take on the assignment of guarding superstar scorer Donovan Mitchell.

So without Grimes, Thibodeau turned to Josh Hart—a skilled wing himself, but also a player who’s been on four teams in six years and has only been with New York since early February.

But here’s the takeaway: Hart, true to form, was the jack of all trades he almost always is.

Mitchell scored on his first try against the 28-year-old—one where Hart forced him to take an off-balanced, left-handed flip-in during the first quarter. The shot was so difficult that Jeff Van Gundy, the ESPN color analyst and ex-Knicks coach, praised Hart’s effort, saying he didn’t need to do anything more on D going forward, or it’d likely result in a foul. And New York couldn’t afford the risk of Hart being in foul trouble, Van Gundy said, with Grimes already missing in action.

Not only did Hart avoid fouling. By racing around off-ball screens and contesting a number of Mitchell’s shots, he helped limit the Cavs guard to one of his worst games of the season: Just 5-of-18 from the field, a game-high six turnovers and only 11 points—the fewest of any Cleveland starter—for a Cavs offense that’s been the NBA’s most anemic this postseason.

Hart’s stout defensive showing was among the biggest reasons the Knicks took a 3–1 lead in the best-of-seven series Sunday with a 102-93 victory at Madison Square Garden.

Josh Hart helped limit Donovan Mitchell to his lowest point total in a full game since Jan. 29 :: Wendell Cruz/USA Today Sports

Offensively, Hart managed to outscore Mitchell with 18 points, all while putting his stamp on the game with seven rebounds and a plethora of key plays.

• A breakaway in the first where he finished through contact to score and draw a foul.

• A lay-in following a deceptive give-and-go with Isaiah Hartenstein moments later.

• A second-quarter sequence when Hart took advantage of Cedi Osman’s mistake trying to save a loose ball under the basket, immediately scoring off the giveaway.

• With the Knicks up 88–81 with just over five minutes left in the game, Hart hauled in a defensive board before going coast-to-coast in transition.

• On the following possession, when Cleveland’s defense fell asleep and pressed up too far on Jalen Brunson during a scramble, Hart got behind big men Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen for an easy dunk.

The swingman helped put the game out of reach for good with a midrange turnaround prayer that went down as the shot clock was expiring, and then an offensive rebound he kicked out to Brunson for a wide-open, nail-in-the-coffin triple, setting the raucous Garden crowd on fire.

“What can you say about Josh Hart?” Thibodeau said after the game. “Again, one big play after the next. A big shot. Big offensive rebound. Great defense. The guy, he’s just a winner.”

"What can you say about Josh Hart? It's just one tough play after the next. The guy, he's just a winner"

- Tom Thibodeau on Josh Hart's performance today pic.twitter.com/Hopf2MpjEf

— Knicks Videos (@sny_knicks) April 23, 2023

None of the contributions were out of the ordinary for Hart, one of the league’s most unusual players. During his regular season with the Knicks, he hit 51.9% of his triples. At 6'6", he’s a fantastic rebounder for his size, particularly on the offensive glass. If you need a sense of how often he’s off to the races from a fastbreak standpoint, consider this: Among players who logged 25 games this season, Hart had both the NBA’s highest and second-highest transition frequency rate (meaning how much of his offense derives from such plays). His transition rate in Portland was a league-high 32.9%, and then he found himself in transition 30.9% of the time, the NBA’s second-highest rate, in 25 games with New York. The Blazers and Knicks scored 117 and 118 points per 100 plays, respectively, when Hart led those scenarios.

Swapped for Cam Reddish at the trade deadline by Knicks president Leon Rose, Hart has arguably been a perfect pickup for New York. Aside from lessening the team’s dependence on wing RJ Barrett, who struggles with consistency, Hart also gave the club an additional two-way stopper to go along with the second-year Grimes. His unselfish, uptempo playing style is a fantastic fit alongside the iso-heavy Brunson and Randle, who’s still struggling to find a rhythm as he comes off a tough ankle injury. (Thibodeau kept Randle on the bench for the entirety of the fourth quarter, saying he wanted to keep rolling with the group that had the hot hand.)

Perhaps the most notable aspect in all of this: Hart, performing like a star role player for New York, is so clearly the type of player the struggling Cavaliers need. Cleveland coach J.B. Bickerstaff has cycled through his wings—first Isaac Okoro as a starter, then Caris LeVert, with Cedi Osman coming off the bench—but failed to find a consistent answer at the three spot. LeVert’s been up and down, but has the most scoring punch. Okoro’s the least reliable shooter, but has the best defense, and looked solid on Brunson Sunday. Osman makes foolish errors on both ends occasionally, but opponents respect his perimeter shooting far more than Okoro’s.

Wing depth was the clear cost of the club’s high-profile Mitchell acquisition, which quietly pitted the Cavs against New York. Last summer, Rose and the Knicks opted against dealing role players—Grimes, specifically—that the Jazz reportedly wanted in exchange for Mitchell. Cleveland then swooped in and nabbed Mitchell after the Knicks failed to meet Utah’s asks.

This series shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a test of which team won out in that situation, as trades aren’t merely a one-season thing. Still, one thing is clear: Hart was a beyond-perfect fit for this Knicks roster. And his presence with the Knicks—in conjunction with the glaring absence of his sort of skill set with the taller Cavs’ roster—is mortally wounding Cleveland.

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