Tom Thibodeau can’t win when it comes to Josh Hart.
The Knicks coach appeared on the “Roommates Show” podcast on Thursday hosted by Hart and teammate Jalen Brunson and took some good-natured umbrage at his guard’s depiction of a Feb. 28, 2023 game against the Mavericks in which Hart went toe-to-toe with Kyrie Irving in a busy third quarter.
“We didn’t have Jalen, we didn’t have Julius, we didn’t have OG — we didn’t have any of our guys,” Hart recalled. “It was like me and Donte. An there have been several moments where — I know doing this offense and defense, hustle and all that, bro, you’ve got to like be in crazy shape — [Thibodeau] called like three-down, which is a post-up for me, eight times in a row.
“I’m running back, Kyrie is like, ‘they doing this the whole quarter?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know, bruh, I don’t want this anymore.’ Let me get a couple of play calls, but max me out at like, four, maybe five play calls a game.”
What’s Thibodeau to do?
“If we didn’t do it, he’d be complaining about that,” the coach said with a smile. “Then we do it, he’s scoring, so you keep doing it and then he’s gonna complain about that. No matter what you do, so just do what you think is right.”
It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what he was getting into when Hart came aboard in an early February 2023 trade.
Hart recalled a ballroom walkthrough” in Sacramento to go over plays, films and other important information with the Knicks, in which he came “rolling in 30 seconds before we’re starting,” according to Thibodeau, and with “terrible body language” to boot.
“That was setting the tone,” the coach said. “To be fair, I gotten the scouting report on him. I got to set the tone early with this.”
Hart defended himself saying he’s on time — even if he arrives at 10:59 for an 11:00 meeting.
He got a crash course in Thibodeau’s coaching style, too.
“Thibodeau is the most attention-to-detail coach I had,” Hart said. “So I’m sitting there like, ‘Damn, man, why is this film so long? Why we got four boards up, like bruh, just play a couple clips and let’s keep it moving.’”