CLEVELAND — Josh Hart, in his trademark style, started with a joke when formulating his thoughts.
What was his immediate reaction when owner James Dolan mandated the Knicks reach the Finals this year?
“We better get to the Finals,” Hart said after Knicks shootaround Monday morning ahead of Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals, “or we’re gonna get traded.”
The comment was tongue in cheek, but there is no doubt that there was significant pressure on the Knicks to win the East this year.
That expectation was set when Tom Thibodeau was fired despite reaching the conference finals. It was solidified in January when Dolan said that “getting to the Finals, we absolutely got to do.”
Monday morning, the Knicks were preparing to fulfill that mandate.
“We all had that aspiration regardless, so we didn’t really need to hear that because we all wanted that moment, we all wanted to see that, especially after last year being in the Eastern Conference finals and coming up short,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “We understand that we’ve gotta take that next step. So what he’s talking about is also how we all felt.
“We wanted to go out there and we wanted to take that next step. Get past the Eastern Conference finals. It was historical last year, the city went crazy and it was awesome to see the city so alive but there’s new standards now, there’s new expectations and we’ve raised the expectations so we knew what we came into this season to do and what we want to accomplish and we’ve just gotta keep our head down and continue to focus on the goal at hand.”
Hart echoed a similar sentiment — that Dolan wasn’t putting any more pressure on the team than they were already putting on themselves.
“Not pressure because I think that’s the goal that we all kind of have,” Hart said. “Obviously, it hits a little bit different when the big dog says it. But that’s the goal that each and every one of us has. And we’re our own biggest critics, so this kind of adds a little bit more fuel to that internal fire of the hunger to get there.”
It is also notable when Dolan delivered that mandate.
It’s hard to remember with how the Knicks have played in the playoffs, but there was a point in the regular season where they were spiraling. Dolan’s comments — breaking a two-year media silence — came Jan. 5, just a few hours before the Knicks were punked by the Pistons in concerning fashion. It was in the middle of a stretch in which the Knicks lost nine of 11 games.
At the time, they looked far from a Finals team.
“The regular season is full of peaks and valleys and ebbs and flows, that’s how a regular season goes,” Towns said. “And you kind of expect a run like that to happen at a certain part of the season. It was just the most inopportune time, especially when things weren’t looking great and New York fans, rightfully so, are not the most patient. So we understood that.
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“Tough stretch for us but it also helped us grow and be more unified and understand that if we continue to believe in each other, we continue to lean on each other, we can get out of any situation regardless of it’s a 2-9 run in the season or it’s a 22-point deficit in Game 1. As long as we continue to believe in the goal and continue to lean on each other, we’ll be fine.”
