Speaking to reporters on Thursday at Team USA’s pre-World Cup training camp, Knicks forward Josh Hart discussed his decision to pick up his $12.96MM player option for 2023/24, as well as the club’s addition of his former Villanova teammate Donte DiVincenzo.
Perhaps most importantly, Hart addressed his contract situation going forward, expressing a desire to sign a deal that will keep him in New York for multiple seasons.
“Hopefully,” Hart said when asked about a long-term extension, per Ethan Sears of The New York Post. “Opting in, I was gonna take it one day at a time. We get there and then we can start having that conversation. Hopefully — that’s a place where I want to be and a place I want to call home. So we’ll see.
“… It was a hard decision (to exercise the option), but New York is somewhere I wanted to be. And we’ll get to everything else, hopefully later down the line. But opted in, New York is where I want to be. It’s where I want to call home. I feel like that was the best decision to do.”
Hart will become extension-eligible on August 9. He would be able to tack up to four new years onto the final year of his current contract and could receive a raise of up to 40% on his current $12.96MM salary, with subsequent 8% annual increases. That would work out to a maximum starting salary of $18,144,000 and a four-year total of $81,285,120.
The fact that Hart decided to play for Team USA this summer is a strong signal that he and the Knicks intend to get something done sooner rather than later, in Sears’ view. The 28-year-old admitted he had “a little bit” of apprehension about suiting up for the U.S. World Cup team and risking injury before he locked in a long-term deal, but he determined that the opportunity to achieve the dream of representing his country was worth it.
As Ian Begley of SNY.tv writes, when Hart opted into a $12.96MM salary for the coming season rather than declining his option to negotiate a higher salary, it helped generate enough flexibility below the luxury tax line for the Knicks to make a competitive offer for DiVincenzo, who signed a four-year deal worth about $47MM, plus incentives.
The Knicks weren’t DiVincenzo’s only suitor, so Hart may not have known that his option decision would result in a reunion with his former Wildcats teammate. But he said on Thursday that, in picking up his option, he wanted to give New York the “chance to be the best team that it could be and help them compete.” He’s excited for what DiVincenzo will bring to the team.
“He’s a New York style player. That blue-collar, hard work thing – that’s what he does,” Hart said, according to Begley. “He’s going to go defend multiple positions, be tough, be gritty, help us win games. New York is going to love him. He’s definitely a guy that we needed, that we wanted and happy we got.”