Josh Hart calls out 'scared to shoot' narrative
11/21/2024 03:33 PM
After the Knicks’ 138-122 Wednesday road win over the Phoenix Suns, Josh Hart told reporters that he’s feeling confident in his shot. And that they can roll with narratives about his hesitation to if they want, but he’s the person in charge of the shots that Josh Hart takes.
“I’m confident in my shot right now,” Hart said in the visitors’ locker room. “I’ll leave the, ‘I’m not confident,’ or, ‘I’m scared to shoot’ narrative for y’all. Y’all can roll with that if y’all want, but at the end of the day – for me, you know – I like to play my game how I want to play my game. I like taking my shots how I want to take them. Taking the shots that I want. Um, and I don’t let anyone affect that.”
Hart is known for his willingness to be silly translating to leadership in the Knicks locker room. But he was quite the straight shooter here, pun certainly intended.
Josh Hart is propelling the Knicks with his great… shooting?
Hart contributed greatly to the Knicks’ Wednesday night win over the short-handed Suns. He recorded 19 points, 11 rebounds, six assists, and three steals, and only recorded one turnover and two fouls. Hart made eight of his 11 shot attempts including two of his three from behind the 3-point arc. Single game +/- numbers can be extremely finicky but Hart had the second-highest of the contest with a +22.
And this performance was just one of many thus far in a season full of offensive growth for the 29-year old Swiss army knife of a wing. Hart played in six games during the 2023-24 regular season in which he finished with 18 points or more. He’s reached that mark three different times in the first month of play this season.
And wait, there’s more! When the Knicks traded for Hart in the 2022-23 season, he shot 58.6% from the floor in the portion of the season he played for New York. But in his first full season as a Knick, Hart’s FG% plummeted to 43.4%. A combination of several factors likely caused this: the additional volume in attempts that came as a result of the several injuries the Knicks sustained that season, being tasked with more ticking end-of-shot clock time bombs, and simple variance.
But Hart has made 81 of his first 136 shot attempts in the ’24-25 NBA season. That’s good for 59.6% which would easily be his career-high if the season ended today.
Hart is averaging what would be the fourth-highest volume of shot attempts per game of his career. And he’s making the most of them. The additional space on the court as a result of sharing the floor with four highly-reputable shooters is helping. And Josh Hart’s success on the offensive side of the floor is proof for Knick fans that their team’s huge experiment seems to be working so far.
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