Knicks News - Rumor Roundup

Some Knicks news and notes to chew on as we wait for New York to finish filling out its roster…

🏀 Fresh Legs, Better Hart

Josh Hart saw his workload reduced dramatically last season. According to his longtime trainer, Stefan Valdes, that extra rest directly contributed to Hart’s massive jump in efficiency.

​In 2024-25, Hart’s final season under Tom Thibodeau, the Swiss Army knife wing led the entire NBA in minutes per game, logging a whopping 37.6 a night.

​In 2025-26, Mike Brown’s first season in New York, that number plummeted to a far more reasonable 30.2 MPG.

​Yes, Hart went from No. 1 in the NBA in minutes per game to No. 86.

And wouldn’t you know it, fresher legs apparently help you shoot a basketball from far away.

​After connecting on just 32.2% of his three-point attempts over his final two seasons under Thibs, Hart drilled a career-high 41.3% last season — while spending much of the year playing with a splint protecting his badly injured right ring finger.

​“I would say no matter how many minutes he plays, he’s going to give you the same output — but he had fresher legs,” Valdes told Kristian Winfield of The New York Daily News. “So fresher legs allow his body to be more efficient. That’s why he averaged 41 percent from 3 [this year] compared to 33 percent the year before when he was playing so many minutes. So you have fresher legs. You’re taking just as many shots, but you’re making more because you have less fatigue.

​“Where everyone else struggles to go 100 percent, Josh can go 140 percent,” Valdes added. “Now that we have 140 percent that he can push, we can maybe [this summer] now get to 150-160 percent where everyone else is capped at 100 percent capacity.”

​🏀 While we’re here, let’s give Mike Brown some well-deserved flowers.

​Thibs’ stubborn refusal to expand his rotation, lighten the starters’ workload or embrace some of the league’s evolving offensive principles ultimately contributed to his demise. His rigidity could be maddening, and Leon Rose and company eventually made the enormously difficult decision to move on. After an expanded search (for which the front office was heavily criticized), they brought in Brown.

​His mandate was pretty clear: reduce the starters’ workload, improve the defense, modernize the offense (less isolation, more threes and ball movement), experiment with different lineup combinations and, oh yeah, continue winning a whole bunch of basketball games.

​Mission accomplished.

Brown led the team to 53 wins, breaking Pat Riley’s franchise record for the most wins in a Knicks head coach’s first season (51 in 1991-92) and then to the team’s first title in 53 years.

​During the regular season, the Knicks were better offensively and defensively than in 2024-25. They won more games and had a higher Net Rating. And they accomplished all this despite the starters logging significantly fewer minutes.

​As noted above, Hart played nearly 1,000 fewer total minutes, but he certainly wasn’t the only starter who was far fresher due to increased rest from October through April.

Here are the regular-season tallies:

Here are the postseason MPG averages (via Blitz.co):

🏀 As an aside, have all the brilliant experts who spent years mocking us nerds as the “minutes police” acknowledged yet that maybe — just maybe — the minutes police had a point?

Because I’m pretty sure the banner hanging in Madison Square Garden forever qualifies as Exhibit A.

I’m sure the apologies were heartfelt and plentiful. I probably just missed them. 🤣