Josh Hart Says It's 'Idiotic' to Compare Knicks to Last Year's Team After Trades

Josh Hart isn't living in the past, and he had a message for those fans who still are as the 2025 NBA postseason continues.

"If you continue to look back and compare yourself to years prior and teams prior, you lose the perspective of what you have," the New York Knicks guard said ahead of Sunday's game against the Detroit Pistons, per Stefan Bondy of the New York Post. 

"And this team—we don't care about the toughness, because we feel like we have the toughness, but we also feel like we have the offensive firepower to go out there and put up 140 points. So it doesn't really affect us. I just think it's idiotic to compare us to the past, because we're the New York Knicks of 2024-25. And it's either you get behind us or you don't. And if you're not, stay on that side when we have success."

Last season's Knicks went 50-32 and reached the second round of the playoffs despite a number of injuries. Bondy explained that team was "in many ways, the embodiment of that glorified '90s Knicks identity" with toughness and overachievement.

Yet New York made a number of changes since then and no longer has players such as Donte DiVincenzo, Julius Randle and Isaiah Hartenstein. It added pieces such as Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges, which only elevated expectations for 2024-25.

While it improved by just a single game during the regular season on the way to a 51-31 record, it still has the opportunity to make a deeper playoff run.

"Comparisons are the thief of joy," Hart said. "We're going to compare ourselves to last year, for what? We don't got Donte, we don't got [Isaiah Hartenstein], we don't got [Julius Randle]. … We don't have any of those guys. And now we got a totally different group and a totally different personality."

The city may not have completely fallen in love with this season's team like it did with the 2023-24 group, but that can quickly change in the postseason. And New York leads its first-round series against Detroit 2-1 with the opportunity to seize full control with another win on the road in Sunday's Game 4.

That could set up a second-round showdown with the reigning-champion Boston Celtics.

And there is no faster way for a New York team to earn the love of its city than with a postseason victory over a team from Boston.