It hasn’t been an easy season for Julius Randle and the New York Knicks. After leading the woebegone franchise to the playoffs and earning All-NBA honors last season, Randle’s shooting has regressed and the team has fallen to No. 12 in the Eastern Conference. He has ducked the media so often that the Knicks have been fined for it, but things took another step in the wrong direction on Saturday in what was one of the worst losses of New York’s season.
The Knicks led the Los Angeles Lakers by 21 points on the road, but collapsed in the second half and were ultimately defeated in overtime. Randle scored 32 points, but he couldn’t keep his cool as the game progressed which ultimately culminated in him slapping the laptop of video coordinator Scott King. The two were quickly separated on the sideline.
The situation has been “resolved” according to Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau. “Computers are part of the NBA. It’s heat of the moment,” Thibodeau said. Still, the underlying problems facing Randle and the team are still very real. Randle is visibly frustrated by both his own struggles and his team’s. Thibodeau is struggling to both manage his own locker room and balance his own style with management’s demands. Specifically, he was reportedly against the acquisition of Cam Reddish and has largely held him out of the rotation. The Knicks rank 24th on offense despite spending their whole offseason trying to improve on that end of the floor.
With the trade deadline mere days away, the Knicks are running out of time to figure out how to fix this. Randle isn’t helping matters with outbursts like this, but he hasn’t even begun the four-year contract extension he signed in the offseason. These problems aren’t going to fix themselves, and if Randle is going to be a long-term member of this team, he and the team and going to figure out how best to move forward without letting all of this tension boil over.
