Josh Hart wants LeBron James and the 76ers run off the Madison Square Garden floor on Ring Night, and as a Knicks fan who’s waited fifty years for a banner, I have never agreed with a professional athlete more.
In an exclusive interview with Heavy Sports after the league dropped its opening night schedule, Hart didn’t hedge about what he wants out of Oct. 20. “I would love for it to be a Ring Night-esque of Boston the other two years ago when we played them on Ring Night and they just beat the hell out of us,” he said. Then, in case anyone missed the point: “I would love to do that that game.”
That’s a specific and slightly deranged request, but it’s also correct. The Knicks raise their first championship banner since 1973 and hand out rings that night, and the league scheduled LeBron James’s revamped 76ers as the opponent, the centerpiece of the NBA’s opening night tripleheader on NBC and Peacock.
Somebody in the league office has a sense of humor, or a sense of ratings, or both.
Hart’s reference point is real, and it stings on purpose. Two years ago, Boston hosted its own Ring Night and turned the Knicks into a punchline, winning 132-109 while tying the NBA record with 29 made threes. New York walked into a celebration of somebody else’s title and got buried under it. Hart wants to run that exact play back, except this time the Knicks are the ones with the banner going up.
LeBron didn’t make this easy to ignore, either. He left the Lakers as a free agent and signed a two-year, $8 million deal with Philadelphia, joining a roster that already traded for Jaylen Brown and still has Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey walking around. That’s a stacked team built specifically to be taken seriously in the East. Meanwhile, the Lakers aren’t walking into anyone’s building on opening night, because they’re not on the schedule at all. LeBron traded his way out of that indignity and into a brand new one.
My dad texted me the second the schedule leaked, already talking about Ring Night like it’s a Super Bowl. He’s not wrong to. This is a defending champion that went 16-3 through the playoffs, swept two rounds, and beat the Spurs in five to end the drought, choosing to define its title defense against the exact moment it once got humiliated on its own kind of night. This team remembers exactly how it felt getting run out of its own building, and it’s using that memory on purpose.
One thing complicates the fantasy a little: talk is cheap in September, and Boston’s 29-three explosion happened because a healthy, connected roster played a near-perfect game, not because Ring Nights are cursed. The Knicks still have to actually be that good on Oct. 20, against a Sixers team with three All-Star-level scorers and a Hall of Fame chip on its shoulder. Hart can want the humiliation. He still has to help deliver it.
In case the point didn’t land in the locker room, Hart put it in writing too:
https://twitter.com/joshhart/status/2095224806220222716
Boston did it to the Knicks with a smile on its face. New York gets a shot at the rematch with a banner already hanging over its head. Circle Oct. 20 and start warming up the “beat the hell out of us” chant — pointed the other way this time.
