NBA playoffs 2025 - Why Josh Hart - and his wide-open 3s - can fuel Knicks - ESPN

DEFENDERS HAD SWARMED Jalen Brunson with less than 30 seconds remaining in last season's pivotal Game 6, a first-round contest that would either bring the Philadelphia 76ers even with the New York Knicks or propel New York to the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Brunson drove left, but 76ers 7-foot center Joel Embiid walled off the paint as Nicolas Batum and Kelly Oubre Jr. chased from behind. But Brunson, in the midst of a third-straight 40-point performance, didn't pull out one of his crafty moves to sneak by Embiid or lure another Philly defender into a foul.

Instead, the Knicks point guard swung a perfect pass to the top of the key, to the player who had been unexpectedly lighting up the 76ers during the series and who was left wide open: Josh Hart.

Hart hesitated slightly, looking to his right as he considered passing to Donte DiVincenzo (a 40% 3-point shooter that season) on the right wing. But with DiVincenzo covered, and Hart still seeing no defender in front of him, he took matters into his own hands the same way he'd been forced to for much of the series after Philadelphia made the decision to play off the 34% career 3-point shooter.

The result was an incredibly clutch 3 for Hart — his 17th of the series — that essentially sealed the Knicks' hard-fought first-round win. «He's put a lot of time into his shooting,» Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said after the game. «I always have the belief that when it's a big shot [he's taking] that it's going in.»

Fast-forward nearly a year later, and that same level of belief in Hart's less-than-steady jumper could be just as important throughout this current playoff run for New York.

You'd be hard pressed to find a player who hustles harder than Hart, who led the NBA in minutes