Josh Hart plays basketball as if his headband were on fire. He hurtles his body through the air as if shot out of one of those T-shirt cannons, and he is willing to pay the price of a crash landing. Better yet, Hart will do all these things while playing hurt, in this case with an injured left thumb.

He got an X-ray on it before Game 3. “It wasn’t broken,” Hart said, and that was that. He played a relentless style of ball because that’s the only kind he knows how to play.

Hart had four points and four rebounds in the first three and a half minutes Friday, and yet, he was still taking social-media grief for his offensive flaws. Hey, he’s hardly a perfect player. The 76ers had Joel Embiid cover him for a reason. But at 31, in his ninth season, Hart provides a ferocity on both sides of the ball required from a legitimate championship contender. He doesn’t care about his injury — he said it’s something he’ll revisit in the offseason — and he sure wasn’t going to sit out with OG Anunoby (hamstring) already sidelined.

And oh, by the way, Hart added of the 76ers: “They got somebody on their team who played through it and won a championship.” Kyle Lowry, fellow Villanova man, did indeed lead the Toronto Raptors to the 2019 title while his left thumb was barking at him.

Hart finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds in a decisive victory that made this a 3-0 series and put the Knicks on the brink of a second straight trip to the Eastern Conference finals and another shot at the franchise’s first appearance in the NBA Finals since 1999. Hart would’ve fit in with those ’90s Knicks. He plays with that level of toughness and grit.