The New York Knicks head into the new NBA season with legitimate championship aspirations.
As Josh Hart aims to snap out of his current funk in order to help achieve their lofty goals, one man has underlined the role the rest of the team has.
Hart and Brunson were college teammates at Villanova, winning a national championship together, and are now looking to find the same success in New YorkGetty
Knicks star guard, Jalen Brunson is putting the onus and blame on himself.
“I have to be a better leader and make sure he’s ready to go by game one,” Brunson said in an exclusive with The New York Post.
“It’s on me.”
Game one is on Tuesday night against the reigning champion, Boston Celtics, as they will raise their NBA-record, banner 18 into the rafters and receive their championship rings.
The Knicks are looking to crash the party and will need valuable minutes out of Hart do so, but if he carries over his play from the preseason, it may be touch and go.
Hart struggled mightily, taking just six shots in 90 minutes with two points, declaring after their last preseason game that he was lost and couldn’t point a finger on his struggles.
“I’m lost. I have no idea,” Hart said.
“There’s a couple days before we have until Boston. So whether that’s trying to get a rhythm with that starting unit or we give somebody else a look and my role changes and comes off the bench and go with that unit.
“So just trying to figure out right now I pretty much have no idea. But we’ll see what happens in Boston (in the season opener Tuesday).”
Those ‘couple days’ are now just one. And while Hart is struggling to point a finger on the issue of his poor play, Brunson continues to point the finger at himself.
Brunson has elevated the Knicks into the NBA spotlight after signing with the team two seasons agoGetty
“I feel like Josh is a very unselfish person,” Brunson said.
“There may be times he thinks, ‘I need to get somebody else involved.’
“But from my point of view, I just feel like we need to be better as teammates to make sure we’re all on the same page or we’re all giving each other confidence regardless. That starts with me.”
As leader of the team and franchise, it does start with Brunson.
Expectations haven’t been this high for New York since the Patrick Ewing days.
The weight of The Big Apple falls on the shoulders of the 6-foot-2 guard who has taken the city by storm over the last two seasons and now faces his biggest challenge.
Bringing a championship to a franchise that hasn’t won it all since 1973.
They have all the pieces to do it, it’s now just a matter of making it all fit.
Bridges joins college teammates Brunson and Hart, forming the ‘Nova-Knicks’ (Photo by David L. Nemec/NBAE via Getty Images)
Head coach Tom Thibodeau is tasked with making it all fit.
He has to fit star center Karl-Anthony Towns and budding star Mikal Bridges into the lineup, both of whom were acquired in blockbuster trades, while still finding a role for Hart.
A role that Thibs said is the same as always for Hart.
“We’re a new team and we’re going through preseason, so there’s a lot for all of us to figure out,” Thibodeau said.
“He’s fine. It’s the same role he’s always had. That role doesn’t change. Just get out there and help the team.”
Sounds simple enough, but it’s going to be on Hart, not Brunson, to pull himself out of this funk.
