Josh Hart is out for the first time this season.<\/p>\n
The Knicks ruled their starting forward and glue guy out with right ankle soreness for Wednesday\u2019s matchup against the Chicago Bulls. His presence on the injury report comes at a moment when the Knicks are still trying to fix their offense.<\/p>\n
\u201cJosh is a connector. He\u2019s a guy that just goes and make plays. I don\u2019t think we call a single play for him at any time, he just goes and gets it done,\u201d head coach Mike Brown said ahead of tipoff on Wednesday. \u201cHe rebounds. Our pick and roll defense has been bad, and he\u2019s helped clean it up at times by putting him on the ball. So his versatility defensively is a bonus for us. So he\u2019s definitely going to be missed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Knicks started Landry Shamet in Hart\u2019s place against the Bulls.<\/p>\n
Hart was listed as questionable Tuesday with right ankle soreness and was ruled out Wednesday afternoon. He started all seven games to open the season, and the Knicks are 3-4 in them.<\/p>\n
It is not the first time this ankle has cost him time.<\/p>\n
Hart missed the Oct. 15 preseason finale in Toronto with a sore right ankle. Last season he sprained the same ankle on Christmas Day against Cleveland, when he stepped on Dean Wade\u2019s foot and missed eight straight games.<\/p>\n
The Knicks went 3-5 in that stretch. He sat out again Jan. 17 against Phoenix with right ankle soreness.<\/p>\n
Hart joked about the sprain on a podcast in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this is my left ankle, I\u2019m back by now,\u201d Hart said. \u201cI won\u2019t have any ligaments to sprain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hart is averaging 8.6 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.9 assists in 31.7 minutes and is plus-37 so far this season, according to data from Basketball-Reference. Two-thirds of his shots are 3-pointers, up from about 41% last season. His two best plus-minus nights this season were wins: plus-19 against the Detroit Pistons and plus-22 against the Brooklyn Nets.<\/p>\n
The Knicks were 44-22 with him last season and 9-7 without him.<\/p>\n
After the Nets game, Hart was asked whether a strong fourth quarter washed away the Knicks\u2019 issues. He said it did not.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. No, the issues are still there,\u201d Hart said. \u201cI think defensively, we were solid. \u2026 But our offense has to get in a better flow, and that\u2019s kind of what\u2019s holding us back right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had described what changed in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe finally played fast, got stops,\u201d Hart said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been playing very slow, very stagnant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hart is also playing out the third year of the four-year, $80.9 million extension he signed in August 2023. He makes $20.9 million this season, and the Knicks hold a $22.4 million team option for 2027-28. The Knicks said Oct. 9 they were tabling extension talks until later in the season.<\/p>\n
Hart said at media day that the timeline matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know it\u2019s a business and we know if some of these things aren\u2019t figured out by February, it might be a different conversation,\u201d Hart said.<\/p>\n
On Oct. 10, he was asked whether the wait frustrated him.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, because at the end of the day, I\u2019m still under contract in New York,\u201d Hart said. \u201cWe have a hell of a team that\u2019s going to try and repeat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Hart is out for the first time this season. The Knicks ruled their starting forward and glue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3779],"tags":[1809,7,920,1035,327,304,48,6,47,76,3883],"class_list":["post-876436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando-magic","tag-ankle","tag-basketball","tag-bulls","tag-injury","tag-josh-hart","tag-knicks","tag-magic","tag-nba","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-magic","tag-orlandomagic"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117562371193769563","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}