We erased a 14-point deficit in Game 1 of the NBA Finals and the guy most responsible for it finished with 3 points on 1-of-5 shooting, and I am going to need everyone to calm down and look at the actual stat sheet.
Josh Hart’s Game 1 stat line in the NBA Finals: 15 rebounds. 6 assists. 4 steals. 1 block. Plus-22. In 27 minutes. He led BOTH teams in rebounds and assists. He only played seven minutes in the first half because of foul trouble. One half of basketball. That’s all he had.
ESPN spent four hours talking about Brunson’s free-throw controversy and Wemby’s 6-of-21 shooting night. Which, fine, those are real stories. But the guy who was +22 — best in the game by eight points — got maybe ninety seconds of airtime and then they went back to the Wembanyama slow-motion highlight package.
The Bird comparison is not a bit. It is historically documented. The last player before Hart to post 15-plus rebounds, 6-plus assists, and 4-plus steals in an NBA Finals game was Larry Bird in Game 3 of the 1986 Finals — 25 points, 15 rebounds, 11 assists, 4 steals. Bird won Finals MVP that year and averaged 24/9.7/9.5 for the series. Hart is being mentioned in the same sentence as that and he shot 1-of-5.
https://twitter.com/OptaSTATS/status/2062377360201003123
Hart is a wing. Wings don’t do this. Big men average 9.1 rebounds and 4.7 assists across 15 playoff games. Hart is out here absorbing possessions that should belong to his matchup — pulling boards away from guys six inches taller than him, pushing the pace before the defense can set — and he does it so naturally that you forget it’s historically bizarre until a stat account tweets it at midnight and your jaw drops.
Six of his 15 rebounds came in the fourth quarter alone. Foul trouble kept him on the bench for most of the first half, and he still finished as the best player on the floor.
With under a minute left in the game, Hart stripped Wembanyama. The Knicks were clinging to a lead, San Antonio had the ball, and Hart just took it from the biggest, longest human on the planet. “I had a lot of energy,” Hart said afterward. “I think I only played like seven minutes in the first half.” Bro said it like it was nothing.
Ask Brunson to explain it. He couldn’t really do it. “That’s just who he is. He’s always been that way. I can’t explain — he just has a knack for doing things like that in crucial times.”
Hart, asked in his post-game press conference if the Bird comparison meant anything to him: “I don’t really care about it, honestly. I’m happy we got the win.”
My dad texted me “WHO IS THIS GUY” at halftime. My dad has watched Josh Hart play for two years. That’s the effect. You watch him every night and somehow he still surprises you, because the things he does don’t compute. Brunson is the engine, fine, everybody knows that, nobody is arguing. But Hart is the chassis. The thing holding the whole machine together that you only notice when it isn’t there.
Josh Hart NBA Finals Game 1 was a 40-year historical event dressed up as a quiet Tuesday night in San Antonio, and the guy who did it went home not caring about any of it.
Must be nice to have that kind of confidence. The rest of us are refreshing the box score at 1 AM.
