New York constructed its roster by seemingly asking a question that a college kid might pose: What if we took teammates from a highly successful college program and teamed them up again in the pros? Knicks executive Leon Rose did just that, pairing former Villanova stars Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart with the Knicks (and, briefly, Donte DiVincenzo, a fourth college teammate).
Brunson and Bridges were on two NCAA title-winning teams in college and Hart was on one of those championship squads and their close-knit friendship and knowledge of how one another plays has been integral to getting the Knicks to their first Finals since 1999. But it didn’t always seem like they’d get along seamlessly. The first time Hart met Brunson,
“I thought he was one of them annoying five-star recruits that come in entitled,” Hart told reporters Tuesday. “Unfortunately he was the opposite, and we sparked a friendship. We’re still friends to this day. Yeah, we still keep in touch. But that’s what my thought process was. I hated him to start, hated him during his visit. Probably the beginning of his freshman year, hated him.
“Mikal was the same way. I hated him, too. He came in, we obviously played a similar position, especially in college, and he was weaker, more frail than I was, so he would grab me and I hated it.
Hart and Brunson lived together in college one year, which sparked the name for the podcast they now co-host, “Roommates.”
“He was still extremely annoying, but I got to be able to tolerate the annoyingness a little bit more because I had to deal with it every single day,” Hart said. “Kal, I kind of tormented Kal a little bit as an older guy. I think there was one time I threw him to the ground at one practice, I texted him after like, yo, you good? And we hashed it out then, and we’ve been cool since.”