The term that Tom Thibodeau uses throughout almost every game, win or lose, blow or nail scrape, is this: ‘Margin of error’.
The Knicks have very little of that. They are a delicate chemistry based on confidence and determination, a belief that they are better overall than as individuals, that they may care a little more than the other man on a given night, especially for defense.
But if you want to give the margin a human face, it’s easy to do.
He wears no. 30 on his jersey, and he played in the NBA All-Star Game, and he became the most indispensable Knick. And with 6 minutes and 41 seconds left in the fourth quarter Tuesday night, Julius Randle went on for a short shot and had the big accident of trying to shoot over Dwight Howard.
Howard is not the force he was, but he is still an imposing presence, still a physical force, still capable of blocking someone’s shot. He filled this one, the third of the night, the 2,168th of his career, the 13th thing, most of all who ever played the game. But that was the side issue for Randle.
Gravity was number 1.
And Randle crashed into a heap to court, unable to break his fall, and landed squarely on his hip. It was at that moment that you could see the flash before your eyes for the rest of the season. Randle is not a one-man show for the Knicks, but he is the engine that makes everything work differently, that makes everything else possible.
And he does not get up immediately.
“You’re very worried when you see a player drop like that,” Thibodeau would say a little later. “But he has a lot of toughness.”
He does. He has. He gets up again. Thibodeau asked him if he should get out of the game. Randle shook it off.
“You hope for the best, because there’s nothing you can do while you fall,” Randle would say. “Initially, it hurts. But after that I was fine. ‘
Up until that point, Randle had 18 points and 14 rebounds, and as was the case most nights, he was mostly responsible for the Knicks leading the 76ers for much of the game. They were still leading by four, 87-83, when Randle crumpled on the ground. He was already clearly tiring and showed the consequences of the business’ end of a back-to-back.
Although he said he was not affected by the fall, it clearly did not help. He scored one point for the rest of the point. He grabs one setback. The Sixers, even without Joel Embiid, had one last setback and used it, and they would win the game 99-96, defeating the Knicks to split this difficult four-game drive away the second half of the season started.
“On a back-to-back night, we took 1-2 in the East to the wire,” RJ Barrett said of the Knicks’ Nets / Sixers parlay. “We need to learn from it.”
Randle was less excited: ‘I do not believe in moral victories. It’s a win or a loss for me. ”
The good news for the Knicks is that Randle stayed upright the rest of the way and insisted that the fall had no effect on the rest of the game. Fair enough. Even minus Embiid the Sixers is a formidable outfit, and the Knicks had to be at their best most of the night to get a chance. They had one. They took it. They go on.
“The games,” Thibodeau said, “are coming.”
Most of the East has been a mess for most of the season. But that has begun to change. The Heat are 9-1 in their last ten games, the Hornets and Hawks 7-3, the Bulls 6-4. If the Knicks want to keep the post-season part of their agenda, they need to keep up. They should especially avoid disasters. They’ve been banged: Mitchell Robinson, Elfrid Payton, Derrick Rose.
Losing Randle would be something else. Losing Randle would be seismic.
So even on a night when the Knicks lost, it was a win to see Randle walk off the floor. The season may not have started with play-offs or play-off aspirations, but it’s on the table now. That’s part of the plan. But only if they can stay whole. And quite means that your no. 30 on the floor.