Knicks' Josh Hart Blasts Pacers Coach for Ref Complaints
New York Knicks star Josh Hart isn't angry at Rick Carlisle, he's just disappointed.
Carlisle, the brief Knick-turned-Indiana Pacers head coach, is the new public enemy of metropolitan basketball, blaming his 2-0 deficit to New York in the Eastern Conference Semifinals on officials rather than his team.
Carlisle's complaints, which reportedly include a list 78 itemts to the league and accusing officials of favoring large market teams, have been widely lampooned by amateur and professional observers alike. Hart joined the fray as the Knicks prepared for Game 3 of the series in Indianapolis on Friday night (7 p.m. ET, ESPN).
"I think it's pretty disrespectful to us," Hart said in video from Stefan Bondy of the New York Post. "Because at the end of the day, we're out there competing and playing at a high level. It's not about officiating. It's not about anything like that. For him to discredit how we're playing, I feel like that's pretty disrespectful."
If anyone has a right to be offended by the idea of Carlisle taking away credit from the Knicks, it's undeniably Hart: the second-year New Yorker has appeared in every single minute of the Pacer series to date, playing four complete games so far this postseason. Having Carlisle chalk that up to divine intervention could indeed be viewed as insulting by the busy veteran.
Hart has found a home in New York with a four-year contract extension kicking in next year, but considering his prior nomadic endeavors (including stops in New Orleans and Portland), it'd fair to assume that he would perhaps have a quantum of sympathy for Carlisle's claims about small-market teams.
Instead, Hart further torched Carlisle and even brought the Knicks' infamous streak of championship futility into the conversation is disprove such theories.
"That’s so stupid, bro," Hart said, per John Flanigan of SNY. "We’re going to say that the big market always wins, but the Knicks haven’t won a chip in 51 years. So obviously that doesn’t hold much weight, I think that’s pretty idiotic. At the end of the day, it’s who's playing the best. It's not about who complains the most small market, big market, whatever. It's about going out there and playing the game and competing at a high level."
GEOFF MAGLIOCCHETTI
Editor-In-Chief at All Knicks