Knicks' trio from Villanova would have loved to play for 76ers, but now that's ancient history
New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, guard Donte DiVincenzo and guard Josh Hart look on in the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Detroit Pistons at Madison Square Garden on Monday, March 25, 2024. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
PHILADELPHIA — They could have been yours, Philadelphia.
Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo — the Villanova basketball threesome that has stolen the hearts of Knicks fans while becoming your prime irritant — would have been happy to be wearing a 76ers basketball jersey early in their careers.
Philadelphia passed on chances to draft all three players when they came out of college, despite the fact they were playing for a team in a nearby suburb that shared their arena and had won two national championships.
So maybe fans should stop the non-stop whining about this supposed trio of traitors, stop issuing demands that the Wells Fargo Center tears down their Villanova banners. Afterall, it was your team who rejected them first.
For 48 hours leading up to Thursday night’s Game 3 of their first-round playoff series, Philadelphia fans have been whining and complaining on talk radio and on social media about the fact that the official X account for the Villanova men’s basketball congratulated DiVincenzo and Brunson for making huge buckets down the stretch of Game 2.
The account also ran a video of the crazy sequence that resulted in the Knicks taking a 2-0 lead in the series. All three, with some help from officials who missed calls, played instrumental roles in the Knicks’ scoring six points in 14 seconds to take control of the game. DiVincenzo and Brunson hit threes, Hart came up with a huge steal.
Yet, apparently this lack of respect between Philadelphia and Villanova is a two-ways street, because the Knicks' Villanova troika can still recall the sting of being ignored by their local NBA team.
“Yeah, I wanted to go here,” Hart said Thursday morning. “They were at 25 and did a draft and stash, some European guy that I can’t pronounce the name. This is the place I wanted to go. Right down the street. Draft night I was a little bummed that 25 came and I wasn’t there.”
Hart was the target of the first Villanova snub in 2017. With Hart still on the board, the 76ers took Anzejs Pasecniks, a 7-foot-2 Latvian center whose rights they renounced two years later. Hart went to the Lakers at No. 30.
Next year came the double snub.
Philadelphia did officially draft Villanova teammate Mikal Bridges, whose mother worked for the team, but then ruined a feel-good moment by immediately trading him to the Phoenix Suns. Both DiVincenzo and Brunson were on the board when the 76ers took Zhaire Smith at 16 with the pick they got from Phoenix.
DiVincenzo, who grew up 40 miles south of Philadelphia, went to the Milwaukee Bucks with the very next pick at 17. Philadelphia still had one last chance to take Brunson, but instead took Landry Shamet with the 26th overall pick. Brunson, infamously, fell to 33 overall where he was taken up by Dallas.
None of the players the 76ers drafted in either 2017 or ’18 are still on the roster. All three of the former Villanova are starting for the Knicks.
“You’re going to school here, grew up in Delaware, half-hour away, so obviously that’s kinda where you wanted to go,” DiVincenzo said of wanting to play for the 76ers. “Then you go through the whole process. You meet with different teams. I’m thankful where I started my career.”
Some of the same fans who will be booing the trio tonight were cheering wildly for them when the Wildcats won two NCAA championships leading up to the 2018 draft.
Hart agrees that it’s strange that at least one of them didn’t end up playing for the hometown team.
“I think so,” Hart said. “With the pedigree that we were coming in with, the discipline, the winning mentality that we had. So, it was probably a little surprising. Us being right down the street the pipeline is there. But they felt their organization wanted to go in a different direction.”
Now, the two directions have collided, and soon only one of the teams will be left standing. The Knicks are no longer thinking about the 76ers' snub when they enter the building. They are no longer thinking about the boos they will surely get when announced before Game 3.
Said Hart: “It would be different if we were right out of college or something like that. But they’ve had six and seven years to hate us.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
