Mike Vaccaro

Mike Vaccaro

NBA

Julius Randle thinks ‘maybe Heat want it more’ — and it certainly feels that way

MIAMI — The thing that will haunt the Knicks all summer long, barring some kind of profound turnaround, will not be the Heat’s 3-point shooting, even if there are stretches of these games when it seems they won’t ever miss again.

It won’t even be Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo, as good as they are, as good as they were, as well as they’ve played, the two of them combining for 50 points Monday, with Butler adding 10 assists and Adebayo 13 rebounds, powering the Heat to the brink of the Eastern Conference finals with this 108-101 victory.

No. This is what will irk them, preoccupy them, keep them up at night in July and August and all the way to training camp, thinking back at this series:

They have been outworked.

They have been outhustled.

They have played the regular stooge to Miami’s smarter, savvier, crisper approach.

All of those things were on display Monday night at Kaseya Center, and all of those things were what prevented the Knicks from making anything resembling a legitimate run at the Heat, who surrendered the lead for exactly 24 seconds.

“Maybe they want it more,” Julius Randle said. “I don’t know.”

If that’s true — and, more to the point, if that’s what the Knicks really believe — then it’s probably going to be a waste of everybody’s time to even bother to show up at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night, when the Knicks will play for their season, when they will try to take the first of what now seems an impossible and impassable three-step journey past Miami.

RJ Barrett sounded a bit more optimistic: “We’ve got to get back to being the tough, physical team that we’ve been, take care of the defense boards and take care of the ball better. If we can clean that up we have a good chance.”

The Knicks react on the bench during their Game 4 loss to the Heat. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST

For a team that stressed all of those things, that did so many little things well and assembled a daily collection of floor burns along the way in surging through the end of the season, and into the playoffs, it is a devastating reversal. And unless a good chunk of the rotation has an epiphany between now and Wednesday’s Game 5, the season is going to go hurtling off a cliff in a most ignominious way.

“We’ve got to get a body on people,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “They’re shooting and when they miss long balls are going over our heads. We’ve got to finish our defense.”


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Time and again in the fourth quarter the Knicks would sneak their way back within shouting distance; time and again the Heat would get two and three chances on the offensive end because the Knicks simply couldn’t rebound the ball. The Heat had seven offensive boards in the fourth quarter alone, 13 overall.

It was inexcusable. Down 91-84 with just under 10 minutes left, the Knicks forced three Heat misses; the Heat retrieved the ball all three times. The ball would roll on the floor, available for both teams; invariably a player in white would beat a player in blue to the ball. Over and over and over.

Gabe Vincent of the Miami Heat and RJ Barrett of the New York Knicks go for a loose ball. Getty Images

Butler and Adebayo were great. Kyle Lowry continues to spend every game in the way-back machine, this time for 15 points and four assists. The Heat’s collection of long-range snipers made 13 3s. All of that is true. But all of that could have been overcome. The Knicks never let themselves have a chance to find out. It was out of character for this group, or at least what this group used to be only a week and a half ago.

And now this group is dangerously close to being out of season.

“They played better than us tonight,” said Jalen Brunson, who did his part, scoring 32 and adding 11 assists, having a hand in 54 of the Knicks’ 101 points, committing only one turnover. “We were fighting an uphill battle. And we didn’t do enough within the 48 minutes.”

The Knicks have played with a razor-thin margin for error anyway this year. Now they have none. Now they have to figure a way to make one last stand at home and then come back here, and try to win a game in a building in which they’ve led for exactly 24 seconds out of 96 minutes so far this series.

“That’s who we’ve been all year,” said Randle, who had 20 points and nine rebounds but had six more turnovers (that’s 10 for the two games in Miami) and wound up fouling out. “We’ve got to find a way to step up and keep the season alive.”

“We’re on the brink of elimination,” Brunson said. “Everything we’ve got should be the mindset of everybody.”

Jimmy Butler blocks a shot by RJ Barrett. Getty Images

It was, for most of the season’s first 87 games. The last five, it’s the Heat who have out-Knicksed the Knicks, who’ve gotten to every loose ball, snared every important rebound, taken far better care of the ball. The margin for error is gone. The abyss beckons, short of a few epiphanies and a complete attitude readjustment. Immediately.