BREAKING: Randle Getting Surgery, Done for Season

The air is officially out of the balloon.

Per Woj and confirmed by multiple other sources, Julius Randle is undergoing season-ending surgery on his right shoulder.

Thoughts, in no particular order…

🏀 What a blow for Randle. He is not every fan’s cup of tea, and that is fine. He certainly hasn’t always been mine.

But there has been no player I have watched in my lifetime that wants to be on the court more, come hell or high water. On top that, he wants to be there for his team.

Watching him play with OG in January really crystalized how he could be a part of a title-winning core. The pieces just fit. He saw it as we saw it. To have the rest of his season taken away borders on cruel and unusual punishment.

🏀 Speaking of C&U punishment, Knicks fans haven’t taken a blow this hard since KP went down. In some ways this is worse, in some ways it’s not nearly as bad.

On the down side, the Knicks were going nowhere when Porzingis went down. This team had real hopes of a run to the East Finals, if not further. They could beat any team on any night. Now, their ceiling has been lowered significantly. More on that in a bit.

On the plus side, KP represented the only hope that Knicks team had, and we knew the possibility existed that he’d never return quite in the same form because of the nature of the injury and his particular build. Randle, on the other hand, should be back to normal when he returns. As the reports state, the whole point of getting the surgery now is because him trying to come back and play would have risked further injury. This, in theory, greatly minimizes that possibility.

Far more importantly than that, the KP team needed Porzingis to be a beacon of hope as the franchise looked to turn around its image. These Knicks have no such issue. While this news obviously impacts what moves they may make this summer, nothing about it diminishes the heights of what they hope to accomplish beyond this season.

🏀 Speaking of beyond this season, the Knicks say Randle will be re-evaluated in 5 months, which is the beginning of September, or a month before camp opens. Perhaps a return for the start of next season isn’t off the table (which I imagine played into the decision to perform the surgery now rather than wait any longer to see how the shoulder responded to rehab).

🏀 “Weeks not months”

What unbelievably irresponsible reporting from the national media members from top to bottom ever since this injury occurred.

🏀 It feels wrong to speculate on how this might impact New York’s decision / ability to acquire a star player this summer, but putting our head in the sand feels equally irresponsible.

Does this surgery essentially make Randle untradeable? Of course not…but the notion that another team would pay 100 cents on the dollar for him in a deal for their star player seems far-fetched, optimism about his recovery be damned.

That also doesn’t mean he won’t be moved if the right deal arrises. What would that deal be? The sort where the front office knows that they’re not getting anywhere close to full value on Randle given his production when healthy, but feels it can’t bypass the chance to acquire whoever the target is, even if it means adding in more draft capital than they might otherwise want because of this injury.

In short, this almost certainly increased the chances that Julius will be back in New York at the start of next season, but I also wouldn’t put money on it.

🏀 As for the rest of this season, everything - and I mean everything - now hinges on OG Anunoby.

Without Anunoby, the Knicks could still put up a fight against almost any team in the playoffs. I’d probably pick them against the Magic. Depending on how Donovan Mitchell looks over the next few weeks, maybe the Cavs as well. The Heat and Pacers are wildly inconsistent. Hell, the Bucks just lost to the Grizzlies and Wizards in consecutive games. Who knows what happens with the Sixers.

At the same time, this team has shown us what they are without Anunoby and Randle. They are 15-14 since the Heat game when Julius went down, 12-14 if you take out the games OG was back for, and 11-11 if you remove both the games Anunoby missed and the games Brunson missed (including the Cavs game JB played 47 seconds). Their net rating in this time is plus 3.2 - good for 11th in the league over that stretch - with the 14th ranked offense and 9th ranked defense.

Between their record and their statistical profile, they grade out as a typical 5th, 6th or 7th seed, which feels about right given their personnel. That’s an interesting team, and maybe one that can steal a playoff series, but nothing more.

But with Anunoby? That dog might still be able to hunt. We saw Jimmy Butler shoulder an insane usage rate last postseason as essentially Miami’s only creator, and it got the Heat to the Finals. I don’t know if Brunson can quite muster that same level of output after he’s already been leading the league in usage for the last 10 weeks, but I bet he can come close.

If he can do that, and the Knicks have OG able to soak up ~36 minutes per game at something close to full health, you can probably talk yourself into winning any non-Boston series.

🏀 But should that be the expectation?

To me this is the most fascinating question. This team had sky high hopes when they made the Anunoby trade, and even higher expectations after January. Randle’s injury obviously lowers all of that, but they are still coached by the most insanely competitive human being alive. The man who once gave the LeBron-era Heat a run for their money with Nate Robinson as his leading scorer will concede nothing.

My two cents: while the rest of the season isn’t quite playing with house money, it’s close. OG or no OG, this team should not be looked down upon if they can’t get out of the first round, almost regardless of how it goes down. Julius Randle is an All-NBA level player and arguably the highest combination of skill and brute force in the league outside of the reigning MVP. Asking the Knicks to pretend like “we still have enough” is utter nonsense.

That said, the season is not over. Win a few more games, get OG back, get some rest during play-in week, and let the chips fall where they may.

🏀