Josh Hart believes comparisons to last years Knicks are idiotic

DETROIT — The love from the fans and media for last season’s Knicks lived strong and is dying hard.They overachieved.

They outrebounded.They were, in many ways, the embodiment of that glorified ’90s Knicks identity.As dedicated Knicks fan and Public Enemy rapper Chuck D tweeted Saturday, “Donte DiVincenzo has a cult-like basketball following in New York.”But DiVincenzo and those Knicks are gone — replaced by higher expectations, an identity of scoring finesse over grit and a squad that is sitting two wins from advancing to another conference semifinals. The message Saturday from Josh Hart — who is among the most important holdovers from last season’s squad — was to embrace these new Knicks instead of dwelling in the past.“If you continue to look back and compare yourself to years prior and teams prior, you lose the perspective of what you have,” Hart said.

“And this team — we don’t care about the toughness, because we feel like we have the toughness, but we also feel like we have the offensive firepower to go out there and put up 140 points.So it doesn’t really affect us.

I just think it’s idiotic to compare us to the past, because we’re the New York Knicks of 2024-25.And it’s either you get behind us or you don’t.

And if you’re not, stay on that side when we have success.”In other words, it’s time to get on board or don’t come crawling back. “Comparisons are the thief of joy,” Hart said.“We’re going to compare ourselves to last year, for what? We don’t got Donte, we don’t got [Isaiah Hartenstein], we don’t got [Julius Randle].

… We don’t have any of those guys.And now we got a totally different group and a totally different personality.”This Knicks iteration holds a 2-1 series lead heading into Sunday afternoon’s Game 4 at Little Caesars Arena.

A win would almost certainly clinch advancement — teams with a 3-1 advantage have won over 95 percent of those series — with a potential second-...