SAN ANTONIO — Jalen Brunson displayed plenty of grit in the New York Knicks’ Game 1 victory in the NBA Finals, but second on the Most Valuable list in the early stages of the series is do-it-all veteran Josh Hart.
The 6-foot-5 Hart only scored three points and missed four of his five shots. But he collected 15 rebounds, six assists and four steals in the 105-95 victory over the host San Antonio Spurs, and he’s hungry for more as the Knicks come back for seconds in Game 2 on Friday night.
The 31-year-old Hart had three more rebounds than anyone on the floor, which included 7-foot-4 Victor Wembanyama of the Spurs.
“His energy is just relentless, it doesn’t stop,” Brunson said Thursday of Hart, his former college teammate at Villanova. “I mean, he eats candy all the time. That tells you who he is. He’s a big kid with an absurd amount of energy.”
Hart’s contributions were certainly sweet as New York ran its postseason winning streak to 12, tied for second-longest in NBA history.
Hart averaged 12.0 points, 7.4 rebounds and 4.8 assists in 66 regular-season games. His postseason numbers are 10.9, 9.1 and 4.7, respectively.
Hart, though, only considers the numbers when the topic is victories.
“It takes humility and just a willingness to sacrifice,” Hart said. “We’re in the NBA Finals — there’s millions of people watching. It’s easy to get wrapped up in human nature of wanting to get recognition, wanting to score the ball, wanting to show people what you can do on the biggest stage.
“That’s not everyone’s calling and not everyone’s assignment. I know for me, that’s not really my assignment. It takes a little bit of time to find that humility.”
Knicks coach Mike Brown certainly feels good about having a team-first player like Hart.
“He rebounded the basketball. He was great,” Brown said. “He was great on the weak side defensively. He impacted the game in so many different ways for us. When you look at what he shot from the field, you wouldn’t think that he was probably the most impactful guy on the game last night.”
Brunson was the scoring machine and put up 13 of his 30 points in the final quarter. Brunson also played through injuries — right knee, left ankle — sustained during the first half of the contest.
New York closed Game 1 with an 11-0 run to leave the Spurs bruised and battered on the home floor.
San Antonio was just 6-of-21 from the field and committed five turnovers while being outscored by 10 in the final quarter.
The Spurs are loaded with players who are part of their first NBA Finals, but coach Mitch Johnson insisted youth wasn’t the reason for the shaky play down the stretch.
“Old teams make bad decisions, too, at the end of games,” Johnson said. “It’s looking at a picture, understand if you see that moving forward, whatever that pattern is, whatever led to that situation, if you can recognize it and make a better decision next time or understand maybe where there’s a better opportunity to look for an advantage, we’ll try to help them with that.”
Perhaps the biggest symbol of their defeat was Wembanyama’s 6-of-21 shooting. The Frenchman also committed six turnovers.
He maintained that he didn’t succumb to the pressure of his first game on the ultimate NBA stage. Wembanyama also received a text from legendary director of basketball operations Gregg Popovich about his performance.
“In the big lines, it was that I’ve been bad and I’m better than this,” Wembanyama said of what Popovich’s message entailed.
Wembanyama did contribute 26 points, 12 rebounds and three blocked shots.
One San Antonio player missing in action was De’Aaron Fox, who scored seven points on 3-of-13 shooting and was regularly assigned to defend Brunson.
Fox stated the obvious Thursday — he’s got to shoot better — while also reminding people that Wednesday’s game counts as just one loss.
“We know it’s a long series,” Fox said. “Obviously you want to win every game that you have on your home court, but it’s not the way it happens every day. We try to go in and fix the things we need to fix. Obviously we want a different outcome.”
