Knicks forward Josh Hart said he will need to monitor his right ankle on an ongoing basis ahead of his return to the lineup against the Dallas Mavericks on Monday.
“Yeah. I think it was something where I could have took my time and waited to get back, waited ’til I was 100 percent, but I’m a little too impatient for that,” Hart said at his locker before going through his pregame warmups on Monday. “It’s something that might linger a little bit but should be manageable.”
Hart missed two-and-a-half weeks with what he described on his Roommates Show with Jalen Brunson as a significant right ankle sprain suffered in the Knicks’ Christmas Day victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers. He returned to the lineup on Jan. 11 and played in both legs of the Knicks’ Jan. 14-15 road back-to-back in Sacramento and Golden State before sitting Saturday’s loss to the Phoenix Suns with right ankle soreness.
“[The ankle] just feels a little better,” he said. “[I’ll] just go out there and shoot fully to see how it’s feeling, but it feels a little better than it did the last couple days.”
The Knicks have struggled in games Hart has missed due to injury this season. They have lost six of the last seven games he’s missed with the ankle and are 5-6 without him on the season. Comparatively, they are 12-5 with Hart, who is averaging 12.1 points, 7.7 rebounds and 5.3 assists on 49% shooting from the field and 39.5% shooting from three-point range, in the starting lineup. It will mark the best three-point shooting season of his career if the efficiency holds.
Hart said the Knicks having lost eight of their last 10 games played a part in his early return.
“It had a little bit of influence. I want to be out there to try to help the team as much as I can,” he said ahead of tipoff. “So it did a little bit, a combination of that, there’s the competitiveness and the impatience that I display.”
