Back when he was best known for being the original celebrity NBA fan, watching the fabled Knicks of the early ’70s do their thing night after night, Woody Allen unwittingly lent a voice to describe one of the cornerstones of a future generation of Knicks.
“Eighty percent of success,” he said, “is showing up.”
With the rate of inflation, and given the way load-management protocols seem to flummox the NBA at every turn, that figure is probably closer to 92 percent now, especially as it applies to Julius Randle. Randle can be many things as a basketball player, and to Knicks fans who endeavor nightly to watch him they can often be contradictory.
But make no mistake about Randle: he shows up. He plays. Monday night in Los Angeles he twisted his ankle in the first quarter. Shook it off. At halftime he needed four stitches to close a bloody lip. Shook it off.
Later, he hit the 3-pointer (with Anthony Davis in his face) at the shot-clock buzzer that essentially cliched a 114-109 win for the Knicks, allowing them to fly home with a 2-2 Western swing ahead of Wednesday’s first intramural squabble with the Nets at Barclays Center. It underlined a terrific night for Randle when he had 27 points and 13 rebounds with a plus-17 rating, often doing battle head-to-head with LeBron James.
“Scratch it out, gut it out,” Tom Thibodeau said.
The Knicks’ coach was referring to his team’s gritty effort, but he was clearly swayed by Randle’s, too. Randle is one of the most curious stars we’ve ever had around here, in any sport. There are nights when the Garden is so frustrated by him, the boos spill out of every corner — most recently in the middle of their most recent game at Madison Square Garden.
But as they were finishing off the Raptors that night, Dec. 11, Randle stepped to the free-throw line with 13 seconds to go at the end of a 34-point, eight-rebound, five-assist night and was serenaded with an extended chant of “M! V! P!” And that’s not the first time he’s felt — and helped inspire — the Garden’s extreme schizophrenia.
“All I know,” Jalen Brunson said a few weeks ago, “is that we seem to win an awful lot when Julius is playing well. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
What the trip west offered was a tour-de-force for both the Knicks’ All-Star Emeritus (Randle’s earned the honor two of the past three years and is gathering testimony for another) and their All-Star-in-Waiting (if Bruson’s 50-point splurge against the Suns didn’t clinch him a spot yet, it put him in a hard-to-refute place). It’s a reminder of just how essential the Knicks’ two best players are.
“All I know,” Jalen Brunson said a few weeks ago, “is that we seem to win an awful lot when Julius is playing well. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
What the trip west offered was a tour-de-force for both the Knicks’ All-Star Emeritus (Randle’s earned the honor two of the past three years and is gathering testimony for another) and their All-Star-in-Waiting (if Bruson’s 50-point splurge against the Suns didn’t clinch him a spot yet, it put him in a hard-to-refute place). It’s a reminder of just how essential the Knicks’ two best players are.
“What’s the answer? What changed? Playing to my strengths,” Randle said in Phoenix last week. “Understanding spots on the court where I can either get a high-percentage shot or they double me and I can kick out and play-make for my teammates. While I can shoot the ball and make a ton of 3s, I understand who I am as a player, what my strengths are.”
Starting with this one: showing up for work, every day, lunch pail in hand.
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