Steve Popper: Josh Hart's tenacity on defense never skips beat for Knicks

With the microscope of the postseason in place we work the numbers, thumbing through the history books to see who had done what Karl-Anthony Towns did Saturday night with a 20-point triple-double. Or we search the other side, trying to find a starter with zero points, four turnovers and a minus-26 for the game like Mikal Bridges had in Game 3 of the Knicks opening round series against the Hawks.

But sometimes it’s not numbers that tell the story.

After all, what would you make out of a 4-for-10 shooting night, just 1-for-5 from beyond the arc? Or the three assists countered by a pair of turnovers. And throw in a technical foul for a tirade loud enough that one of the officials called it from about 50 feet away?

The numbers don’t always tell the truth. Sometimes you have to watch.

Because if you watched you’d have seen from the start that while Towns was orchestrating the offense, Jalen Brunson was drawing the focus of the Atlanta defense and OG Anunoby was continuing to score from all parts of the court, it wasn’t the offense that told the story.

But those shooting numbers above belong to Josh Hart. And it wasn’t the scoring that set the tone, but doing what he has done throughout the series: serving as a hard-nosed stopper for whoever Knicks coach Mike Brown needs slowed down and as simple as it sounds, playing harder than anyone else on the court.

Midway through the first quarter Saturday, Hart chased Jalen Johnson around a screen, stripping him from behind. He then flipped the ball ahead while tumbling to the floor after being undercut by the Hawks' Dyson Daniels. Hart's pass led to a fast-break layup for Bridges.

They don’t track these things, but it’s hard to imagine that anyone else had done what he’d done, scrambling for steals and loose balls three times in the last two games and from the ground firing the ball ahead to jump start the offense.

Later in the first half he burst through the defense for a layup and as he raced back, he signaled for a switch, putting him on Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who had just been honored before the start of the game as the NBA’s Most Improved Player. Bringing the ball up the floor near midcourt, the sort of take-a-breath moment for Alexander-Walker to survey the floor, Hart lunged at him and ripped the ball loose. He then took it the other way for a breakaway dunk.

“It felt like there were 50-50 balls that they came up with,” Atlanta coach Quinn Snyder said after the Knicks had evened the series with a 114-98 win to send it back to New York for Game 5 Tuesday.

"So we've got to be better. We didn't do the things we needed to do to win from that standpoint. And I thought we didn't move the ball either. It got stagnant and give them credit there. Their aggressiveness on the defensive end, Josh Hart in particular, he was guarding everybody. So it wasn't a game that was loaded with adjustments as much as it was a team that really got after it.”

“I’ve been trying to do that every game this series, trying to be physical with those guys, take that challenge upon myself,” Hart said. “Don’t think there was anything different today. Trying to do what I’ve been doing. I haven’t been making shots. So I’ve got to make sure I find a way to be impactful.”

The Knicks came into this series as favorites, the third seed against a Hawks team that has been built on the run and surged up to the sixth seed by winning 19 of their last 24 games. In the first few games, even winning Game 1, the Knicks seemed to go through the motions at times as if this was just a warm-up for what’s next. Maybe a rematch with the Boston Celtics in the next round.

But it wasn’t until the Knicks fell behind two games to one in the series that panic and desperation seemed to set in. Deuce McBride said on Friday that the Knicks were, “playing for our lives.” Dramatic, but probably accurate. The Knicks fired their head coach after losing in the Eastern Conference finals last season, so a first-round exit might have all levels of the organization updating their LinkedIn profiles.

Hart plays that way nearly all the time. While Brunson possesses the mastery of footwork and Towns has otherworldly offensive skills for a 7-foot center, what Hart has is the fire to ignite his teammates. He can be the burning energy that they need, whether it’s a game in the middle of the dog days of the regular season or a night like Saturday.

“Yeah, he does what's asked of him 9.5 times out of 10,” Brunson said. “And I mean you can joke around, say all the things I say about him, but this one thing he's going to do is go out there and compete. And he’ll do that night in and night out.”

I asked him what’s the .5 that he doesn’t do what’s asked and Brunson smiled and said, “I won’t say.”

Brunson said that he saw some of this desperation from the team in the second half of Game 3 when they overcame an 18-point deficit to take a lead in the final minute. They were spurred on by Hart, Jose Alvarado off the bench, Anunoby and even Bridges, who was spotted on replays mouthing curses at Daniels.

Was this desperation the lesson that the Knicks needed to move forward now?

“Potentially,” Hart said. “You never know what that can be. You can’t be satisfied with this performance. You can’t go into Game 5 thinking we had a great game and they’re just going to lay down, because they’re not. They’re going to come out with a sense of urgency, a sense of physicality that they probably haven’t showed yet. We’ve got to be ready to weather that storm and have our own physicality.”

The Knicks will sort through the numbers and analytics like we all will. And they will watch the film, too. And they will know that from Hart, they will get that effort.

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.