SAN ANTONIO (AP) — When the New York Knicks needed a lift, they turned to the player who has given them everything he has all season.
Josh Hart overcame early foul trouble to lead a defensive effort that stymied the San Antonio Spurs in the second half as New York rallied for a 105-95 victory in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday.
“That’s just who he is,” said Jalen Brunson, who led the Knicks with 30 points. “He’s always been that way. I can’t explain it. He just has a knack for doing things like that, and in crucial times, as well. It’s a credit to who he is as a player.”
Scoring three points on 1-for-5 shooting doesn't sound like an impactful line, but Hart's value to the Knicks goes well beyond his offense.
Hart finished with 15 rebounds, six assists, four steals and a blocked shot in 27 minutes. The Knicks outscored the Spurs by 22 points when Hart was on the court, the highest plus-minus by eight of any player in the series opener.
Hart is first player with 15-plus rebounds, six-plus assists and four-plus steals in an NBA Finals game since Hall of Famer Larry Bird in Game 3 of 1986 NBA Finals for Boston against the Houston Rockets.
“I don’t really don’t care about it, honestly,” Hart said, chuckling. “I’m happy we got the win. Happy I was able to impact the game. Obviously, I had a couple of shots that I felt good about that didn’t go in. How I play the game, it goes far beyond made shots, it goes far beyond box scores. Glory to God, he was able to strengthen me in moments of weakness and I was able to just go out there and just hoop.”
The Spurs were held to 40 points in the second half and were outscored 29-19 in the fourth quarter. Hart had three steals in the fourth quarter alone as the Knicks sealed a victory in Game 1 with Game 2 scheduled for Friday in San Antonio.
Hart picked up three early fouls that limited him to 6 1/2 minutes in the first quarter and only 37 seconds in the second. San Antonio shot 38% on 3-pointers in scoring 55 points in the first half with Hart largely on the bench.
“These guys are resilient, man,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said. ”They get better as the game goes along. They really try to pay attention to the details that we are throwing at them."
Hart was key to that turnaround in the second half.
Spurs forward Julian Champagnie was 5 for 6 on 3-pointers in the first half but missed all five of his attempts in the second half. Champagnie finished with 16 points.
At 20 years old, Spurs rookie Dylan Harper became the youngest player to score 10 points in the NBA Finals, doing so in his first six minutes on the court. He was limited to four points on 2-for-5 shooting in the second half and finished with 16 points.
Hart's first steal of the fourth quarter led to a running layup by Brunson that put New York ahead 92-86 with 6:34 remaining.
His final steal led to Brunson's 15-foot jumper with 38 seconds that sealed the victory.
“You know, you look at Josh Hart’s line being 1 for 5 from the field, and the guy had 15 rebounds and four steals, and he made some unbelievable defensive plays and he helped us tremendously in transition,” Brown said. “So, heck of a job by Josh.”
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New York Knicks guard Josh Hart (3) rebounds as forward Og Anunoby (8) looks on during the second half of Game 1 of the NBA Finals basketball series against the San Antonio Spurs, Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
New York Knicks guard Josh Hart (3) steals the ball from San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama during the second half of Game 1 of the NBA Finals basketball series, Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Ewan McGregor, for a fleeting moment after “Trainspotting” came out, felt like a rock star.
It wasn’t his first significant project; it wasn’t even his first film with director Danny Boyle. And he was, in his words, fairly arrogant and cocksure at the time. But that kinetic film about four heroin addicts in late-1980s Scotland was and, 30 years later, remains defining — in his career, in the culture and in his understanding of what true artistic satisfaction can feel like.
“It’s very much in that early part of my career, and of course, even today, probably the most important piece of work that I was involved in, just because it had such a massive effect on my life. Not only because of what it did, but because of how it felt to make,” McGregor told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “It set the bar unknowingly high because it’s been quite hard to match ever since.”
Both McGregor and Boyle are a little wistful about the time, and what they made, on the eve of its 30th anniversary re-release. Starting Friday, a 4K digital restoration will be in theaters nationwide. Though “Trainspotting” was very much of its moment with its Britpop soundtrack, its Thatcher-era grit, its darkly comedic tone and shrewd blend of giddy highs and tragic lows, it’s also one that has stood the unforgiving test of time.
“You get kids coming up to you who are 17 who said they’d just seen it,” Boyle said. “I could be their grandfather … yet it still spoke to them.”
Boyle was a hot commodity after “Shallow Grave,” a 1994 black comedy about flatmates in Edinburgh starring McGregor, and Hollywood was calling. Literally. A peak-famous Sharon Stone cold-called him and asked if he’d want to come make a film with her. But he had his sights set on Irvine Welsh’s buzzy debut novel, teaming once again with screenwriter John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald.
The budget would be small, 1.5 million pounds or about $1.9 million, and the shoot would be quick and local. They didn’t know what they didn’t know: Boyle remembers asking his cinematographer, the late Brian Tufano, if they could use an anal probe camera for the “worst toilet in Scotland” scene.
“I remember him saying, ‘Well, Danny, yes, you can get that. But I’m not sure how Ewan and his family and agent will feel about that,’” Boyle said with a laugh. “He tempered my kind of extreme way of approaching this material.”
And somehow it all worked, driven by youthful energy, a bit of arrogance and a passionate commitment to the material.
“‘Trainspotting’ had to be made that way,” said McGregor, who was 23 at the time. “It would have been a disaster if it had been done differently.”
For McGregor, at least part of the vitality came from the fact that they were shooting on film; money was going through the camera on every take.
“We shoot on these cards now, and it just doesn’t matter anymore,” McGregor said. “There’s no natural sort of like rhythm to filmmaking like there used to be then. … I think back to ‘Shallow Grave’ and ‘Trainspotting’ and it feels almost like a different job.”
Boyle too has been chasing that kind of innocence ever since. He said he might have come close on his upcoming film “Ink,” with Jack O’Connell.
“It was liberating not having enough money because you don’t have that limitation of thinking, oh, that’s going to be too extreme for the studio or for the audience reach we’re meant to have,” Boyle said. “You could make it so that if it didn’t work, you just, you know, sulk away with your tail between your legs and call back Sharon Stone and say ‘I was wrong.’”
Like any film about drugs, there was a fair amount of discourse around its release. U.S. presidential candidate Bob Dole even denounced it, unseen, for romanticizing heroin during his campaign. But the film was in the conversation — and it had an enviable group of supporters, including Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and Blur’s Damon Albarn, both of whom provided songs for the film.
After “Trainspotting” became a hit, life changed profoundly for McGregor. In London, he said, “it was madness.” At the time he was sharing a flat with his co-star Jonny Lee Miller, Jude Law and Sean Pertwee. When they’d go out to clubs, they felt like rock stars.
“There was a real energy around it,” McGregor said. “We were part of that, you see, the Blur and Oasis and Pulp and The Verve and all of that amazing music that was happening then. We were the sort of movie version of it, I guess, because Danny knew what he was doing with the soundtrack and because the novel was so huge and current and … and maybe because it was ours. It was British and it wasn’t pandering to America. We didn’t make it for America.”
Boyle hopes that audiences take a chance on “Trainspotting” in the theater, whether they're revisiting it or seeing it for the first time. It was, he said, made with an absolute love of cinema.
“It’s very indebted to ‘Goodfellas,’ which also has that feeling of: You are here to be absolutely assaulted by an experience,” Boyle said. “You know, you have given us your money and you’ve given us your time to be here for 90 minutes, two hours, whatever it is, and we promise, we promise to deliver everything to you that we can.”
FILE - Director Danny Boyle poses in Beverly Hills, Calif., on March 6, 2017. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Director Danny Boyle poses in Beverly Hills, Calif., on March 6, 2017. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - John Hodge, screenwriter for "Trainspotting," left, director Danny Boyle, center, and producer Andrew Macdonald appear during a music video shoot in London on June 26, 1996. (AP Photo/Louisa Buller, File)
