Knicks need to make their Isaiah Hartenstein blueprint work again

This hurts. This stings. Isaiah Hartenstein wasn’t supposed to become an essential part of the Knicks’ basketball DNA, he was supposed to be a backup who played hard for 15 or 18 minutes, did some hard-hat handiwork around the basket, contribute when he could.

Instead, he became a central figure in what the Knicks became this spring, an emotional core that fit right in with the likes of Josh Hart, the two of them grabbing impossible offensive rebounds and clutch defensive boards, Hartenstein developing a pick-and-roll chemistry with Jalen Brunson that unlocked so much of the Knicks’ offense, even developing that little lefty flip shot that seemed to go in about 91 percent of the time.

He got a lot better than he was supposed to be.

And now he’s a lot richer than even he likely ever thought he’d be. Hartenstein made official what the Knicks had long feared Monday morning, signing a three-year, $87 million Godfather deal with the Oklahoma City Thunder that the Knicks simply couldn’t approach, not with them limited by the four years and $72.5 million max Hartenstein’s Early Bird Rights allowed.

Exactly two years earlier — July 1, 2022 — Hartenstein had all but been secretly smuggled into New York on a two-year, $16 million deal, a news item that was completely swallowed up by the Knicks’ signing of Jalen Brunson the same day. Hartenstein was considered a smart signing, but hardly a galvanizing one.

He changed that. When this iteration of Knicks first demanded to paid attention to, in the five-game sweep of Cleveland in the 2023 playoffs, Hartenstein teamed with Mitch Robinson to completely overwhelm the Cavaliers’ young twin towers of Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley.