The term that Tom Thibodeau uses all the time, almost any game, win or loss, explosion or nail, is this: “Margin of error”.
The Knicks have very little of this. Theirs is a delicate chemistry based on trust and tenacity, a belief that they are better as a whole than as individuals, that they may 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 the number 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 left on Tuesday night in the fourth quarter, Julius Randle went up for a short shot and had the great misfortune of trying to get over Dwight Howard.
Howard is not the force he had before, but he is still an imposing presence, still a physical force, still able to block someone’s blow. He was going to fill it, all right, the third of the night, the 2,168th of his career, the 13th of all who had ever played the game. But that was the secondary problem for Randle.
Gravity was number 1.
And Randle collapsed in front of the yard in a heap, unable to break his fall, landing straight on his hip. At that moment you were allowed to see the rest of the season flashing before your eyes. Randle is not an individual show for the Knicks, but he is the engine that makes everything else work, that makes anything else possible.
And he didn’t get up immediately.
“You’re very worried when you see a player come down like that,” Thibodeau said a little later. “But it has a lot of hardness.”
He does. He did. He stood up. Thibodeau asked him if he should leave the game. Randle shook that.
“You hope for the best, because you can’t do anything while you fall,” Randle would say. “It simply came to our notice then. But then I was fine. “
At the time, Randle had 18 points and 14 rebounds and, as was the case most nights, was largely responsible for the Knicks leading the 76ers for much of the game. They drove four more, 87-83, when Randle fell to the ground. It was already clearly tiring, showing the effects of a business end in the background.
Although he said he was not affected by the fall, it clearly did not help. He scored a point for everything else. He grabbed a rebound. The Sixers, even without Joel Embiid, had one last counterpunch and used it and will win the game 99-96 and prevented the Knicks from sharing this difficult four-game journey that kicked off the second half. of the season.
“In the back-to-back nights, we took 1-2 east to the wire,” RJ Barrett said 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’s a victory or a loss for me. ”
The good news for the Knicks is that Randle stood all the way and insisted that the fall had no bearing on the rest of the game. Fair enough. Even minus Embiid the Sixers are a formidable outfit, and the Knicks had to feel in the best part of the evening to have a shot. They had one. They took him. I am going further.
“Games,” Thibodeau said, “keep coming.”
For most of the first half of the season, much of the East was a mess. But that has begun to change. Heat are 9-1 in the last 10 games, Hornets and Hawks 7-3, Bulls 6-4. If the Knicks want to keep the postseason as part of their agenda, they have to keep up. Above all, you must avoid catastrophe. Already hit: Mitchell Robinson, Elfrid Payton, Derrick Rose.
Losing Randle would be different. Randle’s loss would be seismic.
So even on a night when the Knicks lost, seeing Randle come off the floor was a victory. The season may not have started with the playoffs or play-in aspirations, but they are now on the table. They are part of the plan. But only if they can stay whole. And whole means having the number 30 on the floor.