Getty Josh Hart (L) #12 and Jalen Brunson #11 of the United States talk on the court before a 2023 FIBA World Cup exhibition game against Puerto Rico .
Quickly after ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news of Josh Hart‘s looming max four-year, $81 million extension, his New York Knicks teammate Jalen Brunson tweeted his instant reaction.
Pick up that tab tonight nephew @joshhart
Hart and Brunson have been teammates since college, winning a national title in 2016 at Villanova.
They are likely to celebrate Hart’s most lucrative NBA contract with the rest of Team USA in Malaga, Spain, where they are set to continue their warmup games against the Luka Doncic-led Slovenia on Saturday.
Hart became the fourth Team USA player to receive a lucrative extension this offseason after Tyrese Haliburton and Anthony Edwards, who each received five-year, $260 million extensions from the Indiana Pacers and Minnesota Timberwolves, respectively, Los Angeles Lakers’ Austin Reaves (four-year, $56 million), and Brooklyn Nets’ Cam Johnson (four-year, $108 million).
Josh Hart’s Extension a Good Deal for Knicks
While Hart’s contract looks huge at first glance, it is considered a good deal for the Knicks when you look at it through the lens of the escalating NBA salary cap.
According to ESPN’s Front Office Insider Bobby Marks, Hart’s salary will only top out at 13.7% of the cap space in its final year.
Here’s the Josh Hart extension breakdown (salary and % of the cap).
The new CBA will net Hart an additional $11.7M.
There are no New York players north of 22% of the cap in 2024-25.
The Knicks are still in an excellent position to trade for a max-level star to pair with Brunson should someone becomes available in the immediate future. But they cannot use Hart’s mid-tier contract in a package for a star until he becomes trade-eligible next summer.
If Evan Fournier is traded, Hart will become the Knicks’ fourth-highest-paid player behind RJ Barrett, Julius Randle and Brunson.
It remains to be seen if the Knicks will also give Immanuel Quickley a more lucrative extension that will give them an expensive backcourt down the road.
Josh Hart Posts Emoji Tweet Following Extension
Hart, who openly said that he wanted to make New York his home, sent out an emoji Tweet of two hearts with the orange and blue Knicks hues following the news of his lucrative extension.
“New York is somewhere I want to be,” Hart said at the Team USA camp in Las Vegas. “We’ll get everything else, hopefully, later down the line. But I opted in because New York is where I wanted to be, it is where I want to call home, I felt like this was the best decision to do. … I wanted to stay in New York, I wanted to give this team the best chance to be the best team they can be to go out there and compete. And opting in was definitely something that was going to help us build and continue to build. So, I felt like that was something i wanted to do, something the team wanted, too.”
Hart sat out Monday night’s win over Puerto Rico pending negotiations for his contract extension. He played a pivotal role for the Knicks’ postseason run after arriving from Portland at the February trade deadline. The Knicks went 17-8 with Hart, including winning their first nine games, to finish the regular season as the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference.
He averaged 10.2 points and 7.0 rebounds, the best among guards, 3.6 assists and 1.4 steals during his first 25 games with the Knicks last season.