NEW YORK — Last season, Julius Randle reveled in the adoration from the Madison Square Garden crowd once fans were allowed in, chants of “MVP” showering down on him as a reward for a job well done.
As he was introduced Wednesday night before the game began it was a chorus of boos that greeted him from the home crowd. This season as Randle has gone from an outlier second-team All-NBA player to a struggling and frustrated shell of that player, the response has been far different from the home crowd.
Randle turned the reaction to cheers early in the game, hitting his first three shots and then late in the game earning more applause with a no-look feed to RJ Barrett for a dunk and then a three-point play to keep the team in contention. On this night he gave them what they wanted for much of the night — hard-nosed play, big shots. But he couldn’t give them enough for a win at the Knicks fell to the Charlotte Hornets, 125-114.
With the loss, coupled with Atlanta’s win over Oklahoma City, the Knicks saw their four-game winning streak come to an end and the magic number for elimination from the postseason reduced to just one with five games remaining. The loss also ended any chance of catching Charlotte.
Randle finished with 21 points, seven assists and five rebounds and still there were the jeers only for him. Evan Fournier led the Knicks with 30 points and little difference in the reaction of the crowd from his struggles shooting Monday to his outburst on this night.
Randle entered the game with 7:35 left and the Knicks down by eight and helped pull them quickly within two. But they could not get over the top as the Hornets were presented too many open threes and too many open paths to the rim. Randle dribbled out the final seconds on the clock and this time stayed around for hugs with some of the Hornets — far different than Monday when after a 1-for-9 shooting night the rest of the team celebrated a win and Randle flung the ball behind him and walked directly to the locker room.
The body language was awful. The frustration was clear. The cause or the effect was uncertain, but it was enough that a New York radio station claimed that according to an unconfirmed report Randle asked the Knicks front office for a trade following the game.
Randle didn’t speak after the game Monday and Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau was left to address the rumor and the frustrations ahead of Wednesday night’s game against the Charlotte Hornets at Madison Square Garden.
“Are you serious?” Thibodeau said. “Are you serious? C’mon. You know I’m not going to respond to something like that anyway. Let’s be real.”
Strong, but also not a denial. So Thibodeau was asked a follow-up — to your knowledge does Randle want remain in New York?
“Yeah, so as a coach, you coach the players that you have,” Thibodeau said, again not directly addressing the question. “And you love them all. And I do. If you play for me, I love you. It’s really that simple. The challenge for us is to bring the best out of each other.”
Thibodeau may love Randle and all of his players, but the bigger problem is two-fold: does Randle love New York and will New York love him?
The Knicks showed him the love as a reward for last season, signing him in the summer to a four-year extension worth at least $106 million (bonuses could raise it to as much as $117 million, but he’s likely lost some of those incentives already this season). Now, that contract, while not completely out of line with a player since he is still averaging 20.1 points, 10 rebounds and 5.1 assists, is just an added point of emphasis for the fans to gripe.
Wednesday, like most nights, his wife and young son were seated near the court, exposed to the sounds of this season just as his son would join in and mimic the MVP chants last season.
Randle has been one thing in his Knicks career and that is available — the three games he missed with a sore right quadriceps tendon last week were more than he had missed due to injury in his three seasons combined in New York. But he has been there in body, but sometimes it seems as if he is not in spirit. He has been fined by the NBA for numerous infractions, including obscenities directed at the fan base.
“This place is special,” Thibodeau said. “The fans are passionate. We know what basketball means to this city. We’ve got to give them something to be proud of. We’ve got to come out, we’ve got to play hard, we’ve gotta play for each other, we’ve gotta play smart. … But you’ve got to keep battling with it every day. And that’s where it lies.”
