The term that Tom Thibodeau uses all the time, in almost every game, win or lose, pop or bite his nails, is this: “Margin of error”.
The Knicks have very little of that. Their chemistry is delicate based on trust and tenacity, a belief that they are better as a whole than as individuals, that maybe they care a little more than the other guy on a given night, especially in defense.
But if you want to give that edge a human face, it’s easy to do.
He wears # 30 on his shirt and played in the NBA All-Star Game, and became the most indispensable Knick. And with 6 minutes and 41 seconds to go until the fourth quarter of Tuesday night, Julius Randle went up for a short shot and had the great misfortune of trying to shoot over Dwight Howard.
Howard is not the force he used to be, but he is still an imposing presence, still a physical force, still capable of blocking anyone’s shot. He was going to stuff this one, yes, the third of the night, the 2,168 of his career, the 13th most of all who have played the game. But that was the secondary issue for Randle.
Gravity was number 1.
And Randle fell on the court in a pile, unable to cushion the fall, falling directly on his hips. It was at that moment that you were allowed to see the rest of the season pass before your eyes. Randle is not a one-man show for the Knicks, but it is the engine that makes everything work, that makes everything possible.
And he didn’t get up immediately.
“You are very concerned when you see a player fall like that,” Thibodeau would say a little later. “But he has a lot of resistance.”
He does. He did. He got up again. Thibodeau asked if he needed to leave the game. Randle pushed that away.
“You hope for the best because there’s really nothing you can do while you’re falling,” said Randle. “Initially it hurts. But after that, I was fine. “
Up to that point Randle had 18 points and 14 rebounds and, as has been the case most nights, he was primarily responsible for the Knicks leading the 76ers for much of the game. They were still leading by four, 87-83, when Randle fell to the ground. He was already clearly getting tired, showing the effects of a back-to-back end of business.
Although he said he was unaffected by the fall, it clearly did not help. He scored a point the rest of the way. He grabbed a rebound. The Sixers, even without Joel Embiid, had one last strike and used it, and would win the game 99-96, preventing the Knicks from sharing this difficult four-game trip that started the second half of the season.
“On consecutive nights, we took 1-2 in the east to the cape,” said RJ Barrett of the Knicks’ Nets / Sixers road parlay. “We have to learn from this.”
Randle was less enthusiastic: “I don’t believe in moral victories. It is a victory or a loss for me. “
The good news, for the Knicks, is that Randle remained standing the rest of the way and insisted that the crash had no bearing on the rest of the game. It’s fair. Even without Embiid, the Sixers are a formidable team, and the Knicks had to be at their best most of the night to have a chance. They had one. They got him. They move on.
“The games,” said Thibodeau, “keep coming.”
For most of the first half of the season, much of the East was a messy mess. But that started to change. The Heat is 9-1 in their last 10 games, the Hornets and Hawks 7-3, the Bulls 6-4. If the Knicks want to keep the postseason as part of their schedule, they need to keep up. Above all, they need to avoid catastrophe. They are already hurt: 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, seeing Randle get off the ground was a victory. The season may not have started with playoff or play-in aspirations, but that is on the table now. They are part of the plan. But only if they can stay whole. And it all means having No. 30 on the floor.