The Upside of Julius Randle’s Absence for the Knicks
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In the midst of the most impressive season the Knicks have had in a decade, Julius Randle, New York’s leading scorer and likely All-NBA forward, not only hit an impossible game-winning jumper against rival Miami in early March. He also plopped down a career-best 57 points on March 20 against the Timberwolves at Madison Square Garden.
One week later, last Wednesday, Randle rolled his left ankle so severely that, beyond his inability to stand for nearly a minute, the Garden crowd of 19,812 collectively gasped when the replay was shown on the jumbotron. With the playoffs beginning in 11 days, it naturally raises two nauseating questions for Knicks fans. First, how much time Randle will miss? And secondly, what all does it mean for a solid team that can realistically compete for a playoff round or two?
But if you take a step back, there’s another way to view it, assuming Randle can come back close to full strength once he’s reevaluated next week, near the start of the team’s postseason: This could turn out to be a blessing in disguise for New York, which now gets a chance to work on things until he’s back.
That may sound ludicrous to some, given Randle’s team-leading 25 points and 10 rebounds per game. Obviously the Knicks will need their star forward healthy against a stout playoff opponent like the Cavaliers, who lead the league in adjusted defensive rating with elite rim protection from big men Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen.
All that said, even with the fantastic Jalen Brunson serving as his capable costar this time, it’s hard not to think about how rough things looked the last time Randle and the Knicks were in the playoffs, back in 2021. Coach Tom Thibodeau was still starting Elfrid Payton as his floor general. Derrick Rose eventually transitioned from his sixth man role and became a starter by the end of the club’s five-game, first-round series loss to the Hawks. Wing RJ Barrett was the club’s second-leading scorer as a second-year player during the season. Simply put: There wasn’t enough proven, high-level offense around Randle for the team to score consistently in a playoff environment.
But while some of that had to do with roster construction, much of it was on Randle himself, too. At his best, he’s a ballhandling Terminator, seeking—and then destroying—defenders he can simply move out of his way because of how overwhelmingly physical he is. But at his worst, that same belief in his physicality can get him in trouble, like it did against Atlanta. Even when defenses throw an extra defender at him or set up a Giannis-style wall against him, Randle will sometimes go right into the teeth of the D, despite opponents daring him to do just that. The occasionally selfish habits haunted Randle during a frustrating first season in New York, in 2019–20. And on some level they speak to how he had such unspeakably bad numbers against the Hawks the last time his club played in the postseason.
In Game 4 and then again in the closeout Game 5, which he finished with three assists and eight turnovers, Randle used close to 40% of New York’s possessions on offense. That sounds too high before even factoring in that he shot a dismal 29.8% from the field in the series and ultimately finished the postseason with more turnovers (23) than he had assists (20)—a sign that he often tried to force the action as opposed to taking what the defense gave him.
The bright side here, of course, is that Brunson has playoff experience (and even has experience running the show and dominating it) when his team’s best player is out due to injury. His ability to create for others, and obviously himself, not only gives the Knicks comfort, but should also give Randle confidence that if he’s in trouble—be it due to a double team or a situation where he’s picked up his dribble prematurely—that he can lean on Brunson to find the right play. The point guard has scored 30 points in 17 games so far this season, and, in four of those contests, he went for 40 or more, including a career-best 48 points in the game immediately following Randle’s injury.
Perhaps more importantly though: In the midst of this current four-game winning streak, other players have shown an ability to step up, which should give Randle confidence to involve them just as much as he does Brunson.
Josh Hart’s talent as a coast-to-coast transition player sometimes makes him look like a shorter version of Randle with his utter lack of fearlessness. And he’s hit seven of the nine three-point tries he’s taken off a Randle feed so far. (Hart has also made 56.5% of his 46 triples, period, as a Knick, so there’s plenty of reason to believe in him.) Quentin Grimes, the second-year guard, has averaged more than 21 points per game over his last five, but is doing more than just knocking down threes. He’s using his gravity behind the arc to punish defenders who close out too aggressively with dribble drives and backdoor cuts. Sixth Man of the Year contender Immanuel Quickley is averaging 25 points over that same five-game window. Barrett, who has shot poorly from outside for the last two months, is perhaps the wild card here. But even if Barrett struggles under the bright lights, the team has more than enough wing talent now so that Thibodeau shouldn’t feel beholden to playing him. So that won’t be a fair excuse for Randle to look off a teammate the way he sometimes has despite not being open for his own shot.
Randle’s absence gives the players in the rotation—namely backup forward Obi Toppin, who had a season-high 21 points against Washington over the weekend—a chance to extend themselves some, which is never a bad thing. Shooters need a rhythm heading into the playoffs.
In fact, if you go back a decade, it’s clear how much that sort of thing matters. In 2013, Carmelo Anthony was locking up a scoring crown and, like Randle, dropped a 50-point showing in the midst of an incredible scoring run to finish the season. But there were clear historical indications that New York was relying too much on Anthony. When he was bothered by a shoulder injury throughout that playoff run, the No. 2 seed Knicks lacked reliable enough secondary scorers. (Remember J.R. Smith’s suspension in Boston and his brutal shooting in the Indiana series?)
Aside from the role guys, and the issue of easing the scoring pressure on Randle’s shoulders, there’s also the logical argument of simply getting him some rest he otherwise wouldn’t have gotten. Yes, his conditioning will be worth watching once he rejoins the team (particularly because starters play longer minutes than usual come playoff time). But save for Nets iron man Mikal Bridges, no player has logged more playing time than Randle’s 10,029 minutes over the past four seasons. Even after missing the last two games entirely—and playing just 14 minutes the night he got hurt—he still ranks third in the NBA in total minutes, largely because he’s played in a whopping 77 games.
The last time Randle and the Knicks made the postseason, there were fair questions raised about whether New York could realistically elevate its play, in part because Thibodeau’s teams routinely seem to give close to everything they have during the regular season. We’ll see whether that will hold true this time around. But if Randle can be ready to roll when the first round starts, his getting some rest—and allowing teammates the space to spread their wings—could turn out to help the Knicks, as opposed to throwing them out of rhythm.
Meat and potatoes: Good reads from SI and elsewhere this past week
• Rohan Nadkarni wrote on the potential impact of Andrew Wiggins returning to the defending-champion Warriors and before that did a piece on the five things he’s watching most closely as the regular season winds down.
• Chris Mannix has been telling us repeatedly on our podcasts that he would take the Lakers as his Western Conference favorite, and he finally put that opinion in writing this past week. He also penned a story on Anthony Davis’s massive role within Los Angeles’s late-playoff push.
• Aside from last week’s newsletter on the highly disappointing Mavs, who are on the verge of missing the postseason, I wrote on the undeniable fact that the NBA—and often the NBA’s refs—let certain players get away with more.
• Rohan and I also sized up this year’s Hall of Fame class that got announced over the weekend and did our best to place it within a historical context.
• Emma Baccellieri capped a fantastic run covering the women’s NCAA tournament and had a Daily Cover story on Angel Reese and champion LSU. (Mike Rosenberg had a piece focusing on the questionable officiating in the title game, saying it wasn’t the reason Caitlin Clark and Iowa lost, but that it still should have been better.)
• Kevin Sweeney analyzed the biggest keys that allowed UConn to lock down its fifth men’s basketball national championship Monday night. And he put together a Way Too Early top 25 set of rankings for next season. Pat Forde wrote on UConn coach Dan Hurley, the odd duck of a royal basketball family getting his swan moment.
• An oldie but goodie from The New York Times: David Barrett, the guy who wrote “One Shining Moment,” which is famously played on CBS at the end of every men’s tournament, did so on a restaurant napkin minutes after being rejected by a strikingly attractive waitress. Barrett said he wrote it in 20 minutes.
• Stephen Noh of Sporting News, one of my favorite writers, wrote a feature on another of my favorites, Caitlin Cooper, who works her butt off to notice the tiniest details about the Pacers. So much so that she’s drawn the attention of Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton, who subscribes to her newsletter in hopes of learning new things himself. (Noh also had a really good piece in which he spoke at length with Jaden McDaniels about how he developed into one of the game’s best defenders.)
• James L. Edwards III of The Athletic wrote about something I’ve always wondered about: How do die-hard, autograph-seeking fans always know where to stake out players? He spoke to some about their tricks. It’s the sort of strange, fascinating piece James has become great at finding.
• My college buddy Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic had a harrowing but powerful piece on Angelique Francis, a Arkansas–Little Rock forward who attempted suicide eight times but now feels she’s found her purpose in life.
• Sam Quinn of CBS Sports had a fantastic breakdown on the nuances of the new CBA, including both unintended consequences of the deal and something that suggests to him that the league is preparing to expand.
• In case you missed it, presumptive No. 1 pick Victor Wembanyama made one of the wildest plays I’ve ever seen, dunking home his own miss, despite the original shot having come from behind the three-point line. I can honestly say I’ve never seen someone do something like it before. None of us have.
