Knicks 120, Kings 109: “Hey Sabonis, Jerry Lewis called. He wants his haircut back.”

Julius Randle said he had a setback. Tom Thibodeau said he expected him back at some point, in a few weeks, definitely before the season was over.

Randle told Chris Haynes he suffered the issue on a full-contact, on-court practice session five weeks ago.

Thibodeau gave me enough hope to write about Randle’s potential return less than two weeks ago.

“He’s feeling better, so that’s a good sign,” Thibodeau said. “He’s ramped it up some. We’ll see where it goes.”

Who you lying to, Thibs? Please...

Haynes kept his mic hot after the game, interviewed Josh Hart, allowed us to peep into the mind of Randle’s teammate.

Hart, just in case you didn’t watch the clip above or heard about what happened on Thursday at Madison Square Garden, put up a silly 31 points without even attempting a single 3-point shot. He hoisted 19 field-goal attempts from the field, all from inside the arc, and found the net on 14 of them.

Scorching flama.

Oh, and the ‘Nova man also pulled down 9 rebounds, dished out 8 dimes, and stole 2 possessions. Not bad. He was also an honest man, not like the lad managing from the sidelines.

“You saw how I was in Miami. I just physically couldn’t [shoot],” Hart said after the game against the Kings, one the Knicks won 120-109.

“Right now, I gotta just attack the rim,” Hart said. “Shooting the ball, I can’t really get the ball to the basket from three, so I gotta just attack and take what the defense gives me.”

See? That’s a man that ain’t hiding one single thing.

Not hiding were the Knicks (as a team) on Thursday, too.

These dudes were not nearly as shocked by Randle’s season-ending injury announcement as we might have been because they experienced it from inside the building and saw things getting slowly cooked to the point of boiling. So let’s not say ‘Oh, wow, look at these fine people winning a game coming off hearing the worst possible news in the history of the organization.’ Didn’t happen.

Anyway, the Knicks fell down 21 points to Sacramento because, for some reason, they always forget how to play basketball in the early stages of their games. Then, magic—or a smooth combination of Hart, Donte DiVincenzo, and Jalen Brunson, call it what you want—happened.

And lo and behold, New York blasted the Kings and sent them back to their hotel rooms carrying a big, beaming L.

It was a 21-point comeback and a 32-point turnaround, from the former figure down to the final 11-point advantage flashing on the scoreboard hanging from the roof at MSG.

The Knicks were so good that Thibs used eight different reserves if only for a few garbage-time seconds. If you’re new here, let me tell you that’s something unheard of.

The Sixers did their part, too, beating the Heat and thus keeping Miami three full games behind New York in the standings.

The pesky Magic share a 45-31 record with the Knicks, but thanks to the Floridans beating the Manhattanites in their regular-season series they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker and the No. 4 seed. Ugh.

Not a lot of games left, but still enough to maybe climb up the standings a tiny bit, perhaps to the No. 3, even No. 2 (!!!) seed in the East.

It’s going to be mad hard, however, considering the NBA decided that the best thing to do with the Knicks' schedule was to organize games for New York to play on Thursday, April 4 and then again on Friday, April 5... followed by two more on-the-road matchups on Saturday and next Monday... a visit to Boston on Thursday on the first leg of a back-to-back set of games ending with the Nets coming to MSG... and a home season-finale on April 14.

Six games in 11 days. My fingers are going to hurt.

“Hey Sabonis, Jerry Lewis called. He wants his haircut back.” Shouts out to XTREE. Joke made me laugh.