Meet the man helping Knicks' Josh Hart fine-tune his jump shot

This Knicks offseason has been filled with key dates:

June 24: The Knicks stun the NBA by acquiring Mikal Bridges from Brooklyn for five first-round picks.

July 1: Isaiah Hartenstein leaves New York to sign a three-year, $87 million deal with Oklahoma City.

July 2: OG Anunoby agrees to a five-year, $212.5 million contract with the Knicks.

July 12: Jalen Brunson signs a $156 million team-friendly extension.

July 24: Tom Thibodeau and the Knicks agree to a three-year contract extension.

All of these dates will impact the franchise in 2024-25 and beyond.

There's another offseason date next week that looms large for the Knicks: Aug. 5.

That day, Mark Ramljak will meet Josh Hart at an empty gym somewhere in South Florida. The Knicks' do-it-all guard/forward will spend the next two weeks with Ramljak to fine-tune the granular details of his jump shot.

As you probably know, Hart likes to joke around a lot. He keeps things light in the Knick locker room, bringing levity to the high-stress world of professional basketball.

But you won’t find Hart making many jokes during his work with Ramljak; he’s all business when they are in the gym.

“He knows what he has to do. He’s got a great concentration,” Ramljak says. “And he knows that it’s been worth it.”

There’s no formula to measure the exact value of these shooting sessions. But Hart’s 2023-24 season gives you an idea of their impact.

Ramljak usually works with Hart several times over the course of a year. But their schedule was truncated last season due to Hart’s role with Team USA in the FIBA World Cup. Ramljak first worked with Hart during the 2024 All-Star break.

At the time, Hart was shooting 30 percent from beyond the arc and 42 percent overall, per Basketball Reference.

“At some point, I gotta make a shot,” Hart said after one late January game. “Hopefully I do that before Christ comes back.”

Hart and Ramljak spent four days together in Miami over the All-Star break. In the first game after the break, Hart went 2-for-5 from beyond the arc and put up a triple-double in a win at Philadelphia. In the two weeks following the All-Star break, Hart hit 20 of his 46 three-point attempts (43.5 percent), per Basketball Reference. It was easily his best shooting stretch of the season. In the final 19 games of the regular season, Hart shot just 21 percent on threes.

Of course, Hart dominated in other areas (2.0 offensive rebounds per game, 10.7 overall; 5.8 assists, 1.2 steals and a plus-8.5 net rating).

But he didn’t like how he was shooting the ball. So he called Ramljak late in the season and asked him to come to town. Ramljak said he’d need at least four sessions before Game 1 of New York’s series against Philadelphia to get Hart in a good place. So during the six-day break between the end of the regular season and the playoffs, Hart and Ramljak met at a local Westchester gym and went to work.

“The stuff we did was more rudimentary and more mental. Like, ‘Hey, let’s clean up these movements.’ And the simpler and smoother he looks, the better he shoots,” Ramljak says. “Biomechanically, the cleaner we can make you, the simpler we can make you, the better you’ll shoot.”

Again, the results were evident.

In Game 1, Philadelphia had cut the Knicks’ lead to one with 5:30 to play when Tyrese Maxey hit a transition layup off of a Sixers steal.

You could feel the air come out of the Garden. The Knicks were dangerously close to losing the series opener.

But on the ensuing possession, Hart caught a pass on the wing from Miles McBride, took a dribble to his right and knocked down a huge three.

Three minutes later, after Maxey’s three-pointer cut New York’s lead to three, Brunson found Hart on the right wing and the 29-year-old knocked down another massive three.

Hart had one final dagger with a minute to play. He took a dribble to his left and pulled up from 27 feet to essentially seal the game.

Ramljak watched it all from his seat near the basket, living and dying with every shot attempt.

“He misses a free throw and it kills you,” Ramljak said with a laugh. “You’re sitting there and you’re saying, ‘You sank your left knee. Your shoulders weren’t level.’ It’s not as much fun as you think it is.”

It reminded Ramljak of watching his son, Austin, who set the single-season record for made threes in two consecutive years at Rice University.

Athleticism runs in the Ramljak family (Mark’s son, Keith, played football at Columbia University). But Ramljak doesn’t have the traditional resume of an NBA skills coach.

The highest level he played? Running pickup games at UCLA with pros like Paul Westphal, Brad Holland, Marques Johnson and Gus Williams. (One day at the UCLA gym, Ramljak told a 13-year-old Chip Engelland that he should be shooting jump shots instead of set shots; a few decades later, Engelland would establish himself as one of the best shooting coaches in basketball.)

Ramljak coached some Summer League teams with pros. But his career was in corporate tech sales. So Ramljak’s first job as a shooting coach was a labor of love. He helped Don MacLean, then a sophomore at a high school near Ramljak, with his jump shot. Ramljak continued to work with MacLean through his college career at UCLA and nine-year NBA career.

“He was like a little brother to me,” Ramljak says.

After his playing days, MacLean worked as a coaching consultant for CAA, tutoring the agency’s players in the pre-draft process. MacLean invited Ramljak to the gym to observe the players and offer his input. Eventually, he asked Ramljak to help the CAA prospects on the court. Through CAA, Ramljak connected with Hart in the 2021 offseason.

“It’s been very gratifying,” Ramljak says of his work with Hart. “Because he’s such a great young man.”

Ramljak was back in the MSG stands for Game 2 of Knicks-Sixers, again keeping a close eye on his pupil. Similar to Game 1, Hart’s shooting was pivotal in the Knicks' win. He hit four of his five three-point attempts in the first half to keep the Knicks in the game amid a flat start (a game they would eventually win on Donte DiVincenzo’s late three).

In Game 6, Hart knocked down one of the biggest shots of the series. With the score tied at 111 and 25 seconds left in regulation, Hart set his feet and knocked down a three to essentially end the series.

Ramljak wasn’t in Philadelphia for that shot. He watched the rest of the Knicks’ postseason run from his home outside Los Angeles. As the playoffs continued, Hart’s hot shooting cooled off. Playing through an injury, he shot 27 percent from beyond the arc against Indiana.

From his seat at home, Ramljak noticed that Hart “paused” a bit at the top of his shot.

“It was subtle, but it made a difference,” he said.

You can be sure that the subtle pause will be a point of emphasis on Aug. 5, when Ramljak and Hart meet in the gym and get back to work.