BREAKING: Optimism after Randle MRI

The Knicks and Randle, it seems, got some good news.

Exhale.

Both Woj And Shams reported a version of the same report, which is that following MRI’s over the weekend, there is optimism that Julius Randle avoided major injury when he dislocated his shoulder on Saturday afternoon.

Shams added that Randle has received “multiple second opinions” on the MRI in an effort to get the most complete picture.

Stefan Bondy confirmed the report but also noted that this is not yet conclusive, and then Ian Begley came out with a slightly less rosy picture of where things stand:

Even with Begley’s more measured report, this has to be considered good news, and at the risk of being premature, worth analyzing as far as where the Knicks go from here.

To properly do that though, we have to backtrack a bit.

New York entered camp with a clear goal of making progress off of last year. Every beat reporter covering this team was unequivocal in their reporting on that front. This isn’t to say that there was a mandate to make it at least as far or further in the postseason as they did in 2023, but they, like us, know progress when they see it. Notably, the expectation was never a championship or even a Finals run this season. This was always viewed as the year before the year.

Following the trade for OG Anunoby, it’s fair to wonder if that objective changed. In 14 games since the deal, the Knicks are 12-2 while outscoring teams by 15.1 points per 100 possessions. By way of comparison, the best 14-game stretch for the 2022-23 Knicks saw them go 11-3 immediately after the Josh Hart trade, but they “only” had a positive 8.2 net rating. The #WeHere team from two years earlier had a 12-1 stretch starting in April which produced a positive 10.9 rating. In 2012-13, a Melo-led group won 13 straight just before the playoffs, and outscored teams by 14.5 points per 100 possessions during that streak.

These stats only go back to the 1996-97 season, so while I can’t check the numbers for ‘93-94, ‘92-93 or anything from the championship era, it’s fair to conclude that this January has been the most dominant stretch in modern franchise history. Perhaps we should take their record and rating with a grain of salt given the average net rating rank (18th) of the 14 teams they’ve faced. Then again, they’ve beaten two contenders by a combined 74 points during this run. In no uncertain terms, this group is legit.

But are they legitimate enough to move the goalposts, and more pertinent today, have those goalposts changed again following the Randle news?

We can’t know for sure, but through nearly four years of the Leon Rose regime, we’ve yet to see the front office make a move that didn’t consider both the short term and long term ramifications.

What does that mean now? Simply, that they will not expend valuable assets in a trade that materially weakens their position this summer or beyond. If you don’t believe me, consider the reported requirement that any trade involving the Fournier contract must bring back another deal extending into next season, thus maintaining the needed outgoing salary for a future trade. Even in the midst of a possible 50-win campaign, Leon & Co. has their eyes on the bigger prize.

With that in mind, if they think Randle will be back before the end of the regular season, and possibly even within a month, its highly doubtful they will make a trade that fills the specific void he leaves. In other words, don’t expect them to be in the market for big forwards that they wouldn’t have already been interested in pre-injury.

I do wonder though: if there was a player they were on the fence about acquiring before the injury, would this serve as a tiebreaker in favor of going for it? My guess is that it will, simply because this team was already short on shot creation before missing Randle and his 30 usage rate since January 1. I’d also guess that if they were looking at multiple targets ranging from small guards to medium-sized wings, they’d now skew on the larger side of that spectrum, all things being equal.

(Yes, that’s Bruce Brown’s music you hear playing in the background.)

We shall see. More on this story as it develops, although it wouldn’t surprise me if this is the last we heard for a while.

On to Charlotte.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”