The New York Knicks are one win away from the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999.
With that kind of history on the line, nothing said back in January feels small anymore, including what the team’s own owner said publicly.
Per an SNY post, Josh Hart was asked about James Dolan’s comments from January, where Dolan told WFAN Radio that getting to the NBA Finals was an absolute must for this team. The question was simple: what did the players actually think when they heard that?
Josh Hart’s Honest Reaction to Dolan’s Finals Mandate
GettyJosh Hart Reveals What Knicks Players Really Thought About Dolan’s Finals Mandate
Hart did not sugarcoat it. His first read on the situation was about job security, plain and simple.
“Better get to The Finals or we’re going to get traded,” Hart said.
That got a laugh. But Hart did not stop there, and what came next was the more telling part.
“That’s the goal that we all kind of have, that’s the goal that each and every one of us have…. so it just kind of adds a little bit fuel to the internal fire and hunger to it.”
So in Hart’s mind, Dolan was not placing outside pressure on the team. He was just putting public words to something the locker room already believed.
How the Knicks Have Played Their Way to This Moment
GettyJosh Hart opens up about the intense pressure inside the Knicks locker room after a bold mandate that left players thinking about their future
At the time Dolan made that finals predition in January, Knicks were at the middle of a 2-9 slump. So, at that point, the NBA Finals was more like a fantasy for a team that kept losing games in bunches.
But this time around the guys in the postseason tell a totally different face. Boston, who were at No. 2 seed, lost first round to 76ers, No. 1 seed Pistons were gone after the second round. These were not handful of good teams eliminated. Lower seeds were really playing good basketball.
New York swept the 76ers in four games in the second round. In Game 1 of that series, Brunson dropped 35 points and the team shot 74.4% in effective field goal percentage, the third-highest single-game mark in NBA playoff history.
Currently, they lead Cleveland 3-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals and are playing Game 4 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Brunson is averaging 29 points per game in the series, while Karl-Anthony Towns has been performing well at both ends. Knicks’ 10 consecutive playoff games wins, go down as the largest combined margin of any such streak in NBA postseason history.
In January, even Knicks fans had doubts. Right now, the team is one win away from proving their owner right.
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