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    Old Friends. New Team. Same Knicks Championship Dream.

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    Knicks guards Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart were college friends, then took a twisty road to a reunion in the N.B.A.When Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson was asked if Josh Hart had changed much in the eight years they had known each other, he feigned exasperation and quickly said no. Then a little smile crept onto his face.“He’s still a 2-year-old,” Brunson said. “Loves candy. It’s like having — he’s older than me — it’s like having a little brother.”This was all news to Hart, also a Knicks guard, who countered that Brunson, too, has not changed a bit since college.“He’s a child, that’s what he is,” Hart said. “He’s the child. I’m like the parent.”The playful ribbing belies a relationship that was nurtured at Villanova and has remained strong even as the two have taken divergent paths in the N.B.A.Brunson, 26, was a freshman at Villanova in 2015-16 when Hart, 28, was a junior and they won an N.C.A.A. championship together. Hart made it to the N.B.A. a year later as a first-round pick for the Lakers in a draft-day deal with the Jazz. The next year, it was Brunson’s turn: The Mavericks drafted him in the second round. While Brunson spent the next four years in Dallas, Hart played on three different teams.Brunson, second from left, won an N.C.A.A. championship at Villanova in 2016 with Mikal Bridges, left, Darryl Reynolds, center, and Hart, right.Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesThis year, Brunson joined the Knicks in free agency and has blossomed into a star who has helped carry the team to its best record since 2013. Hart arrived in February in a trade from Portland and has brought a tenacity off the bench that has helped the Knicks finish the season with optimism despite working through injuries.Hart and Brunson will have very different but important roles for the Knicks, the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference, as they prepare for a first-round series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, which starts on Saturday.“I think that they had a mutual respect for each other just because they’re competitive assassins,” said Kyle Neptune, Villanova’s men’s basketball coach, who was an assistant coach on the team from 2013 to 2021. He added: “They have just a sense of humanity and a sense of purpose and being good human beings. But then when you get them both on the floor they’re just absolute killers.”The ways Hart and Brunson have excelled with the Knicks reflect who they were as players in college.Brunson was able to connect well with his teammates back then, too.“His ability to adapt to new people is partially because he’s the son of a player and a coach that moved around like a military family,” said Baker Dunleavy, who was an assistant coach for Villanova from 2010 to 2017.He remembered Brunson having a sense of professionalism early on that was rare for someone his age.But, like he did in his N.B.A. career, Brunson had to wait before he could take ownership of Villanova’s locker room. Jay Wright, the former longtime Villanova head coach, remembered sensing that Brunson was a bit uncomfortable in his first year and that he held back some of his leadership ability because the team already had a point guard — Ryan Arcidiacono, who was a senior at the time. The next year, Brunson seemed more at ease as he took on a leadership role.“A born leader and just a guy that loved having everybody count on him,” Wright said.Brunson was the Knicks’ second-leading scorer this season with 24 points per game, up from 16.3 points per game in his last season with Dallas.Ken Blaze/Usa Today Sports, via Reuters ConHart had been named the most outstanding player of the Big East tournament during his sophomore year, and was a third-team all-American his junior year. He sometimes shocked his coaches with the audacity of the shots he took, but they happily accepted the results.Wright recounted several examples of Hart making big plays in high-pressure situations: regular-season games against top-ranked opponents, pivotal Big East tournament matchups and N.C.A.A. tournament games.“You just kind of knew this guy fears nothing,” Wright said.And he did love candy. Once, during a pause in one of Hart’s high school practices, Dunleavy saw Hart reach into a sock, pull out a bag of sour candy and tilt the bag so a few pieces fell into his mouth as if he was taking a sip of Gatorade.Villanova stressed the importance of good nutrition for their players, Wright said, but he was sure Hart found a way to hide candy in the locker room.“Don’t even get me started,” he said.Wright described Hart as more carefree than Brunson, and Brunson as a little more mature.Brunson spent his first four seasons with the Mavericks. He joined the Knicks as a prized free agent last summer, about a month after the team hired his father, Rick Brunson, who had worked with Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau before as an assistant coach.The Knicks were penalized a second-round draft pick in 2025 for beginning free agent discussions with Brunson before the league allowed.Brunson had been an emerging player in Dallas, playing alongside Luka Doncic, but he has thrived being featured more with the Knicks. His per-game scoring average has risen to 24 this season from 16.3 last season, and he is dishing 6.2 assists per game compared to 4.8 last season.Part of what has made him fit so well with the Knicks is the mixture of humility and confidence with which he plays and leads.“He’s an honest leader,” Knicks center Mitchell Robinson said. “He knows when he’s right and he’s wrong, so he’s not afraid to admit stuff like that. And you kind of need that.”Robinson said Brunson texted him last summer to join him in New York for off-season workouts. He didn’t know Brunson before that, but they quickly developed the rapport of longtime friends.Hart has had an effect on his teams through his versatility on defense and on hustle plays — rebounding, chasing loose balls. He was traded twice before arriving in New York, first to the Pelicans as part of the deal that sent Anthony Davis to the Lakers, and then to Portland.For most of this season, Hart relished Brunson’s success from afar.“I think he kind of exceeded everyone’s expectations but his own,” Hart said, adding: “For me it’s just cool because I’ve seen all the work that he’s put in to get to this level.”On Feb. 8, their paths converged.Brunson was at Villanova for a ceremony to have his college jersey retired. Someone showed him the news on a phone that the Knicks had traded for Hart. Brunson shouted an expletive and then said “YESSS!” as he raised his arms victoriously. The people around him started to clap.“Like his big brother was coming home from college or something,” Wright said. “He was so excited. It was genuine, you know. After he saw, he just still kept walking around like: ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe. I can’t believe we have Josh. I’m so pumped we got Josh.’ He didn’t stop the whole night.”Hart has been effective throughout his career on hustle plays, including rebounding and chasing loose balls.Vincent Carchietta/Usa Today Sports, via Reuters ConHart, who had his own jersey retired by Villanova in 2022, had just spoken with Brunson that morning.“Neither of us, obviously, had any idea that was going to happen,” Hart said. “I texted him just about congrats on getting the jersey retirement. And he actually didn’t even say thank you.”In New York, Hart fit in immediately. He is now making better than 50 percent of his 3-point attempts, where in Portland he made only a third. His scoring has gone up, even though his minutes have gone down. The Knicks went on a nine-game winning streak starting with the first game Hart played for them.“I think his game could fit in well anywhere just because of all the things he does,” Thibodeau said. He added: “There’s no agenda other than winning. If you’re open, he hits you. If we need a big shot. He’s what I call a playmaker. Whatever the game needs.”Now, Hart and Brunson often do their postgame interview sessions together, trading off questions if one of them gets stumped. They sit together on the team plane, and, according to Robinson, tell inside jokes that their teammates don’t understand. Together, they will try to help this Knicks team become the first in a decade to win a playoff series. More

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      Why College Basketball Teams Are Turning to Alumni to Find Coaches

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      Coaches of several N.C.A.A. tournament teams either attended their universities, like North Carolina’s Hubert Davis, or started their careers there, like Kansas’ Bill Self.NEW ORLEANS — Just before his senior season at Oklahoma State, Bill Self injured a knee while working as a basketball camp counselor at the University of Kansas. Each time he saw Larry Brown, who was then the Jayhawks’ coach, the limp got worse.Brown felt so badly for Self that when the camp ended he told Self that if there was ever anything he needed, he had only to ask. So Self did.“I said ‘I want to be your graduate assistant next year,’” Self said. “And he said, ‘You’re hired.’”It was not much of a job. Self read USA Today and passed along any articles he thought might interest his boss. He made sure a lane was reserved at a local bowling alley on game days, in case Brown wanted to blow off steam. And, mostly, he stayed out of the way.But during that year, Self built relationships — with an assistant athletic director, with a publicist, with the basketball secretary — and maintained them well enough that when Kansas’ head coaching job opened 17 years later, he had a small army of fans within the athletic department.“That probably played a role in me being able to come back here,” Self said.Taking advantage of those early connections hardly makes Self an outlier in college basketball, where it is increasingly common for former students, team managers, players and low-level assistants to have triumphant homecomings as head basketball coaches.Just look at the Final Four, where Self is joined by Villanova Coach Jay Wright, who caught the eye of Rollie Massimino when he worked his camps and returned to the Wildcats after building Hofstra into a N.C.A.A. tournament team. There’s also North Carolina’s Hubert Davis, who starred for the Tar Heels from 1988-92, then returned to Chapel Hill as an assistant after a lengthy N.B.A. career and dabbling in broadcasting. The other team here, Duke, will be coached next season by Jon Scheyer, a former captain of a national championship team and a current assistant who will succeed the retiring Mike Krzyzewski.Jon Scheyer, right, a captain on a Duke national championship team, will lead the Blue Devils after Mike Krzyzewski retires.Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesSimilar stories have dotted the entire bracket.Texas Tech’s Mark Adams, a 65-year-old basketball lifer, and Michigan’s Juwan Howard, a member of the fabled Fab Five who went on to have a decorated N.B.A. career, took their teams into the second weekend of the tournament with one thing in common: They were doing it at their alma maters.In all, 14 of the tournament’s 68 coaches were working at schools they either attended or began their coaching careers at. And the trend shows no sign of abating: Shaheen Holloway, the architect of St. Peter’s miraculous run to the East regional final this year, was hired on Wednesday by Seton Hall, the university where he starred as a slick point guard and later spent eight years as an assistant coach.Louisville, which has not won an N.C.A.A. tournament game since 2017, turned to Kenny Payne — a Knicks assistant and a reserve on Louisville’s 1986 title-winning team — to reverse the Cardinals’ fortunes. And at least six other people are taking over as head coaches at schools where they either played or served as an assistant.“I find myself watching the coaching carousel in all the sports, asking, ‘What’s their tie to the institution? Have they gone there before?’” said Nina King, the athletic director at Duke. “I think it’s something that we look at.”King said that while coaches who had no connection to Duke were discussed as Krzyzewski’s replacement, it was important to turn to someone from “the brotherhood,” where there was no shortage of possibilities, including the college coaches Bobby Hurley (Arizona State), Tommy Amaker (Harvard), Johnny Dawkins (Central Florida), Jeff Capel (Pittsburgh), Chris Collins (Northwestern), Kenny Blakeney (Howard) and Steve Wojciechowski (formerly of Marquette), or Quin Snyder of the Utah Jazz.Ultimately, Krzyzewski put his considerable thumb on the scale for Scheyer, who has continued to gain commitments from top recruits.“To be able to sit in a kid’s living room recruiting him and say ‘I’ve lived this — come throw in with me because I’ve lived Duke for X number of years,’ I think it’s important,” King said.Kenny Payne won a national title with Louisville as a player and left his job with the Knicks to try to revitalize the program.Timothy D. Easley/Associated PressAn increasing number of coaches can pitch more than a familial tie: They can cite N.B.A. experience. Often, though, that pro experience has not translated to the college game, where having connections to youth basketball power brokers are essential to recruiting elite talent. The job also requires glad-handing boosters and, more recently, navigating the transfer portal, duties that aren’t part of the N.B.A. ecosystem.It’s why former N.B.A. players like Clyde Drexler (Houston), Chris Mullin (St. John’s), Eddie Jordan (Rutgers) and Kevin Ollie (Connecticut) did not have enduring success at their alma maters, though Ollie did win a national championship before fizzling. And it is why Patrick Ewing has struggled at Georgetown, where his team lost its final 21 games this season.“Most of the guys that have been in the N.B.A., they’ve made so much money, they didn’t really care that much about coaching,” said Roy Williams, who retired last year as North Carolina’s coach after winning three national titles and cheered on Davis in Philadelphia last weekend.The Final Four in the Men’s and Women’s TournamentsCard 1 of 5The national semifinals. More

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      Basketball Hall of Fame to Enshrine 16 More

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      The next class will include Chris Bosh, Paul Pierce, Ben Wallace, Chris Webber, Toni Kukoc, Bill Russell (as a coach this time), Yolanda Griffith, Lauren Jackson and Jay Wright.SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Jay Wright used to sell tickets to games in the United States Football League. Ben Wallace was passed over by every N.B.A. team, some of them twice. Yolanda Griffith got a job repossessing cars so she could take care of herself and her infant daughter while playing community college basketball.For all of them, those days are long gone. Basketball’s highest honor has come their way.Wright, Wallace and Griffith were part of a 16-person class that was announced Sunday as the 2021 inductees for the Basketball Hall of Fame. The longtime standout N.B.A. forwards Chris Bosh, Paul Pierce and Chris Webber were among those selected, along with the former coaches Rick Adelman and Cotton Fitzsimmons and the three-time W.N.B.A. most valuable player Lauren Jackson.“It’s not anything you ever even dream of,” Wright said on the ESPN broadcast of the announcement. “It’s pretty cool.”The class even includes someone who has been a Hall of Famer for 46 years. The 11-time N.B.A. champion Bill Russell, enshrined in 1975 as a player, has been selected again as a coach. Russell becomes the fifth Hall of Famer who will be inducted as both a player and a coach, joining John Wooden, Lenny Wilkens, Bill Sharman and Tommy Heinsohn.“Special is only reserved for a few,” Celtics Coach Brad Stevens said of Russell, the N.B.A.’s first Black head coach, who was a player and coach after Red Auerbach retired. “And Bill Russell is as special as they come.”Fitzsimmons was selected as a contributor, as were the former W.N.B.A. commissioner Val Ackerman and Howard Garfinkel, a founder and longtime director of the Five-Star basketball camp, which revolutionized how players were recruited and how coaches taught the game.Toni Kukoc, a three-time N.B.A. champion with Chicago and two-time Olympic silver medalist, was selected by the international committee. Clarence Jenkins was chosen by the Early African-American Pioneers Committee.The four-time All-Star Bob Dandridge was the pick of the veterans committee, and Pearl Moore — a 4,000-point scorer in college in the 1970s, most of those points coming at Francis Marion — was selected by the women’s veterans committee.Wright said he never imagined when he started coaching at Division III Rochester that the Hall of Fame would be a possibility, and he has championed the candidacy of one of his Villanova predecessors — Rollie Massimino — for years.But now, the two-time N.C.A.A. champion coach who was on the hot seat at Villanova after a slow three-year start to his tenure there is in the Hall himself. He had the ticket-selling job before getting into coaching at Rochester and turned that chance into a career like few others.“Jay is one of the best coaches I’ve ever had, and one of the best people I’ve ever known,” said the former Villanova guard Kyle Lowry, now with the Toronto Raptors. “He treated me like a son, and he helped me become the man I am today. He is truly a special person.”Bosh and Pierce were selected in their first year of eligibility; Webber had been a finalist in each of the last five years before finally getting the call. Bosh was a two-time champion in Miami whose résumé was still considered Hall-worthy even after his career ended abruptly — and with him still at an All-Star level — because of blood clots.“Chris Bosh was the ultimate leader, teammate and winner,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “He was a huge part of our success and always did it with real class, selflessness and professionalism. His accomplishments on the court earned him this great honor, but he is also a Hall of Fame quality person.”Bosh was an 11-time All-Star, Pierce a 10-time selection and a 2008 N.B.A. champion with Boston, and Webber was a five-time All-Star pick after a college career in which he was part of the University of Michigan’s Fab Five.“I’m just thankful, man,” Webber said.Adelman’s teams won 1,042 games in the N.B.A., the ninth most in league history. Fitzsimmons was a two-time N.B.A. coach of the year who coached, among others, Charles Barkley, Jason Kidd and Steve Nash.Of the now 140 players from the N.B.A. and A.B.A. that are enshrined in the Hall, none of them averaged fewer points than Wallace, who managed 5.7 per game for his career. He never had a 30-point game as a pro; his regular-season high was 23 points, his playoff high was 29 points.He was a four-time defensive player of the year, making that end of the floor his specialty.“To have that type of journey, to have it end the way it’s ending, it’s an awesome feeling,” Wallace said on the broadcast.Griffith once accepted a scholarship to Iowa, then had a baby and wound up at Palm Beach Community College in South Florida, followed by Florida Atlantic — then a Division II school. Those were the days when she had the repo job, but she still got into the W.N.B.A., won an M.V.P. Award in 1999 and now will be listed among the greats.“My journey was like a rocky, roller-coaster ride, but I owe it all to my family,” Griffith said. “Without my family, none of this would be possible.”Also Sunday, the Hall said ESPN’s vice president for women’s sports programming, Carol Stiff, is this year’s recipient of the John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award. She will be honored at Hall of Fame weekend, which is scheduled to be capped with the enshrinement ceremony on Sept. 11.Sunday’s announcement came one day after the 2020 class — including Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett — was enshrined in a ceremony delayed from last fall because of the Covid-19 pandemic. More