It’s impossible to run from the what-if portion of this dreadful development, so it’s best to say it up high. There was a crystallized moment of this basketball season where if you were a Knicks fan, you were allowed the greatest gift of all: belief. Actual, genuine, legitimate belief, not colored by rose-colored spectacles or fanciful dreams.
We can identify the precise moment, too.
It was with 4 minutes and 28 seconds remaining of a game on Jan. 27 in which the Knicks led the Heat, 115-98. Madison Square Garden had spent the previous two hours in a state of unfiltered delirium. The Knicks were splattering the defending Eastern Conference champions just two days after battering the defending champion Nuggets by 30.
The Knicks were as hot as they’d ever been in the new millennium, and were playing their best ball in decades, in the midst of a month in which they would go 14-2.
One second later, Julius Randle drove to the basket. He was fouled by Jaime Jaquez Jr. He fell, hard, on his right shoulder. The Garden’s roar was reduced to a whisper.
It was as if all 19,812 people knew, in their hearts, that something had changed.
That, maybe, something is over.
The Knicks’ season didn’t end at 10:45 Thursday morning when ESPN reported that Randle’s season was officially over, that after two-plus months of rest and rehab Randle had decided at last to get his shoulder surgically repaired.
Not technically, anyway.
The Knicks are still in play to stay out of the play-in game. And they have shown a season-long resilience, often answering strongest when the looming clouds appear darkest. As if on cue, they turned in precisely that kind of performance Thursday night at the Garden, spotting the Kings a 21-point lead before roaring past them 120-109.
But without their second-best offensive player, it’s impossible to conjure a scenario where the Knicks can harbor any kind of significant playoff run. They can play with the Cavaliers, Magic and Pacers on sheer heart and grit; they’ll need more than that against the Celtics, Bucks, Heat and even an Embiid-embedded Sixers.
So suddenly “what-if” becomes “what-now?”
“We knew it was a possibility all along,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said before the game. “He did all he could to try to get back, and he never got to the point where he felt comfortable with it. It’s a tough break for him, but our reality is what our reality is, and that’s the one thing that I’m proud of with our team is that they’ve shown great fight all year long when guys have gone out.”
The Knicks, in truth, had already begun to make that transition. Not publicly, no: they maintained the illusion of a Randle return even as it became evident as Thursday went on that they knew Randle had actually aggravated the shoulder weeks ago. Thursday was merely the civic reckoning.
The shoulder is a tricky thing. And Randle confirmed what had long been suspected: the physical way he plays, he was always going to be vulnerable to relapse. As he told Bleacher Report: “I went through a full-contact session and re-injured my shoulder. My s–t wasn’t stable.”
The Knicks, at least in code, had already begun to sprinkle breadcrumbs of hints as to what was afoot. By Thursday there was no reason to camouflage it anymore. Said Josh Hart: “Obviously, this is a bummer. He worked his butt off trying to get back and just unfortunately wasn’t able to.”
Randle’s absence means that whatever dreams Knicks fans had of going toe-to-toe with the Celtics or Bucks — and they sure seemed legit early in the evening of Jan. 27 — probably go into the O.R. with him. Now they wait and hope to be surprised by OG Anunoby, hope he can make it back from a bout of tennis elbow in time to at least give them a puncher’s chance against everyone else, depending on how the 2 through 7 slots shake out in the East.
That was the good news Thursday, apart from the victory — Anunoby is resuming contact. In his case, there seems real hope he’ll be back. That wouldn’t make them whole, but for now the Knicks will accept “wholer.”
Maybe that wasn’t the ambition when Randle had the ball in his hands, 4 ½ minutes left on what may be the last night — what might’ve been last second — the Knicks could fancy themselves as interrupters of an inevitable Boston coronation in the East. Life isn’t fair sometimes. And sports, sure as hell, is fair even less.
