Most of the time, you don’t know when a singular moment can define a franchise. I don’t think any of us expected that when the Knicks signed Jalen Brunson or hired Leon Rose, but the impact of making those decisions has put the franchise on a course towards ending their 53-year championship drought and bringing a Larry O’Brien Trophy back to New York.
Sometimes you know. Trading Kristaps Porzingis. Trading for Carmelo Anthony. Striking out in the 2019 offseason. Injuries can kinda qualify here.
The
grey area is where we sit here. When Julius Randle went down with a shoulder injury on January 27, 2024, it was hard to grasp the feeling. The Knicks were coming off one of the best months in franchise history following the trade for OG Anunoby in late December and were well on their way to a sixth consecutive win that would improve the team’s record to 29-17, fourth in the Eastern Conference and three games back of second.
Randle went down and grabbed his shoulder after a hard blocking foul by Jaime Jaquez Jr., who was attempting to draw a charge. The coming hours and days revealed a dislocated shoulder that had an unclear timeline. Initially, it was believed that it was a 1-2 month injury and that he would be able to return for the postseason, but after two months of attempting to return, a re-dislocation during the rehab process prompted season-ending surgery in April.
While the Knicks found a way to get to the No. 2 seed and win seven playoff games without him, they missed his presence in a depleted lineup. That injury would not just be season-ending, but tenure-ending, as Randle would never wear the orange and blue again. About eight months to the day after that game, he was traded to Minnesota for Karl-Anthony Towns.
Welcome back to Knicks Domino Effects, where we look back at individual moments that, one way or another, led to a monumental franchise pivot that resulted in a championship. Today, we’re going to be asking the question.
What if Julius Randle never hurt his shoulder?
Let’s go back to that day in late January against the Miami Heat. The Knicks led by 17 with 4:30 to go in the fourth, which is still well within the realm of possibility for a comeback. Tom Thibodeau was never going to pull the starters here, nor should he have. So let’s say that Randle, instead of going hard to the cup here, kicks it out to a wide open Brunson after Terry Rozier collapsed to help Jaquez underneath.
Brunson buries the triple, and the starters exit the game a minute later with a 20-point cushion. Randle survives the game and likely doesn’t find a way to injure that shoulder. This isn’t like a torn Achilles situation where wear and tear likely contributed, it’s more of a freak accident.
In the immediate short term, there’s still bad news. OG Anunoby’s elbow randomly flared up after this game as well, so that saga still dominates the final two months of the regular season, but instead of Brunson basically going at it alone with only Donte DiVincenzo as his second-in-command, he’ll still have his fellow All-Star (who will actually get to play with Brunson in the game) by his side.
In real life, the Knicks won the ensuing three games following the pair of injuries before embarking on an ugly 3-8 stretch to end February. That wouldn’t dissuade the Knicks from their charge for the No. 2 seed, as they finished 15-7 to top the pack and finish with 50 wins. How does that change with Randle?
Well, the Knicks relied heavily on Brunson during the stretch run as Randle and partially Anunoby rehabbed injuries. They went 0-3 in games Brunson missed with minor injuries. After Randle went down, JB averaged 31.5 points a night across the final 33 games, a number that would certainly go down with his fellow All-Star healthy.
That means we never see some of his best heroics down the stretch. Seven of the 11 40-point games he had that season came in the stretch run. That 61-point game against San Antonio probably wouldn’t have happened. While the captain has shown this propensity to score in bunches throughout his Knicks career, it was this stretch that truly made him evolve into the force he is today. With Randle ensuring that he doesn’t have to hero-ball for this stretch, do we get the guy we currently have?
Anunoby’s tricky elbow limits the ceiling of the 2023-24 Knicks, but they still get the No. 2 seed with 53 wins. They go into the postseason with the dangerous starting five that ran through the NBA in January and use that for a five-game series victory over the Sixers. It still costs them Mitchell Robinson due to Embiid antics and Bojan Bogdanovic, as the injury bug is probably inevitable, but it saves them mileage.
That saved mileage comes in handy against Indiana in the second round. The first two games go the same way, with the Knicks going up 2-0, but one key thing doesn’t happen.
We all know what changed that series for the worse late in Game 2. In this timeline, it doesn’t happen.
Anunoby averaged a staggering 41.6 minutes a game in the first seven games of the postseason due to the injuries and his importance, which likely caused the soft-tissue injury that essentially ended his season. By wrapping up the Philly game a night early due to Randle’s presence, there’s less mileage. His presence also likely reduces his minutes total as a result.
With Anunoby healthy, the Knicks survive a crazy Game 3 in Indianapolis that originally went much different. After losing Game 4, they come home and take the series in five at MSG to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in 24 years.
You might be asking, “Why does a man who has been known for being a playoff dropper change this series so dramatically?” Presence and gravity are half the battle. It’s less attention focused on Brunson as the only offensive threat. It’s less workload on Anunoby because of how thin the roster got, forcing the team to use Precious Achiuwa way more than they wanted. Even if Randle likely underperforms again, it’s enough to push the Knicks to the long-awaited battle with the Celtics.
That series isn’t the easiest to predict. Some are insistent that the January 2024 Knicks could’ve defeated the seemingly unstoppable C’s who steamrolled injured competition the entire postseason, but I find it unlikely for a few reasons. That team was not as well equipped to defend the Jays as the following year’s incarnation of the Knicks, plus the injuries don’t exactly go away.
Robinson and Bogdanovic, at this point, are still out. The overuse of Anunoby and Josh Hart may still lead to their hamstring and abdominal ailments. Even if Randle, Brunson, and Donte DiVincenzo remained upright, it’s unlikely that they have enough to topple the eventual champions, losing in six games but giving themselves renewed optimism going forward.
The start of the offseason still plays out the exact same. The Knicks fiscally cannot afford to keep Isaiah Hartenstein, losing him through no fault of their own. They still massively extend Anunoby and trade a haul for Mikal Bridges, knowing full well that to beat the Celtics, they need a second premier wing defender. The real question lies with what they do after.
We all know that they pulled the trigger on longtime target Karl-Anthony Towns in September, and the fact that Leon Rose and company badly wanted him the entire time means it’s entirely possible it still happens even without Randle’s injury.
Let’s have some fun here. Let’s say that the Knicks elect to wing it with the center depth, banking on an eventual return by Robinson down the road, and go into the 2024-25 season with a center rotation of Jericho Sims, Precious Achiuwa, and Ariel Hukporti. Maybe you could replace Achiuwa with known target Goga Bitadze if they ponied up more than they were willing to, but the main narrative here was no Towns on the team. Randle receives the same three-year, $100 million extension that he got post-trade and is banked in for the long haul.
A lineup of Brunson-Bridges-Anunoby-Randle-Achiuwa is certainly an interesting one, and with Tom Thibodeau’s known reluctance to play small ball, Randle at the 5 is just not happening. That rough center depth hurts the Knicks greatly over the coming weeks and months, forcing them to be a little less patient with Robinson’s recovery. Instead of debuting on February 28, he’s back on January 15, which helps them in the short term, but leads to a reduced postseason presence due to fatigue.
It’s hard to project the inner workings of a regular season with injuries and workload from an entirely different roster, so the Knicks still win 50 games and end up playing the Detroit Pistons in the first round. Should be simple, right?
Wrong. Remember back to that series and who the keys were for the Knicks. Cam Payne won them Game 1, and though he’ll probably still get signed, does he play with the added backcourt depth on the roster with DiVincenzo? What about KAT, who’s late-game heroics won Game 4? Do the Knicks win either of those?
There’s a very realistic chance that this iteration of the Knicks somehow loses to the feisty Pistons, but I’ll default to a gritty, seven-game series that leaves them ripe for the picking by the defending champions in Round 2. By this point, Robinson has been worked extensively due to the lack of Towns and is severely diminished, if not completely out due to injury.
We don’t remember it as much as the heroics of Bridges, but Robinson was +13 and +19 in the two major comebacks. If he can’t be as impactful as he was with fresher legs, and Randle struggles in the postseason, the Knicks don’t win either of those games. I think they’d still put up a fight, but these small marginal things are enough to swing a series against a supremely talented Celtics team, with the Knicks bowing out in six games for the second consecutive year.
The frustration of losing to a rival in consecutive seasons might’ve even trumped the frustration in real life of beating the team you specifically designed yourself to beat before losing to a different team like Indiana. In this scenario, not only is Tom Thibodeau fired, but the roster is likely remade after it’s made clear that the grand experiment to specifically take out Boston failed.
Mike Brown is still likely to be hired as head coach due to the timing of the firing in May 2025, but it might not have been as simple as running back the same framework for Towns as it was the prior offseason. As we know, the biggest motivation behind trading Towns wasn’t his personal ability, but the massive second apron concerns.
In this timeline, instead of Jimmy Butler going to the Warriors from Miami in a midseason blockbuster, it was Towns going to team up with Chef Curry in the Bay Area for 2024-25. They were the only other known team to moderately pursue the All-NBA big man, so their aggressive front office goes all-in to finally give Curry the pick-and-pop partner he’s dreamed of.
So the options for the Knicks to remake their roster going into 2025-26 were limited. That was until the Bucks called them regarding the desire of Giannis Antetokounmpo to play in the bright lights of New York. In real life, the Knicks weren’t very motivated to get something done because of their belief in a new core, but after multiple years of a Brunson/Randle pairing, Rose and company have seen enough.
Randle, Bridges, and DiVincenzo head to the Bucks for Giannis and salary filler. The Knicks go all-in on a Big 3 of Antetokounmpo, Brunson, and Anunoby in a trade nobody saw coming. The desperation comes as Tyrese Haliburton and Jayson Tatum still go down with injury, leaving the Eastern Conference wide open.
That team is as good as advertised. Brunson remains the consistent 25-PPG scorer he’s been this whole time alongside a player who takes Randle’s slashing ability and puts it on steroids. Brown’s ideal offense, pace and space, has to take a back seat as a result, but they still surround the pair with as many pure shooters as possible, even after losing Donte. The elite training staff that has kept the Knicks healthy has a good chance of doing the same for Giannis and his balky calf, but they know the playoffs are more important than the regular season.
As disappointing as it sounded when the team-up was initially announced, the Knicks were fine with being the No. 4 seed and winning 51 games. They were whole entering the postseason, allowing them to sweep the Toronto Raptors in the first round. An obstacle presented itself in a tough Pistons team in the second round, but surely they’d have enough to keep it going, right?
Here’s the problem. Some of the players who turned into New York legends during our legendary championship run never put on the orange and blue. The presence of DiVincenzo in 2024-25 led to Landry Shamet never being signed. Guerschon Yabusele is never signed because the team trades for Giannis and suddenly has frontcourt depth, leading to the mid-level exception being used on Gary Trent Jr. instead, which means no Jose Alvarado at the trade deadline. Maybe Jordan Clarkson is replaced by someone like Taurean Prince as a result.
None of these guys are totally useless, but in the quest to find more shooting, they lose part of their identity. Their offense plays into the defensive strengths of Detroit, and it’s a gritty series that sees many games end 99-92 as a result. The lack of ball pressure by trading Mikal leads to added responsibility on Deuce McBride, who is diminished as he was in real life due to core surgery.
The Knicks don’t win that series. After making the Eastern Conference Finals in 2024 with the January Knicks, they fail to make it back in each of the next two seasons. Wishcasting from that team continues. The voices grow louder about Leon Rose’s job, Brunson’s viability as a top option, and even Mike Brown as coach.
I’m not quite sure what happens from here. Most likely, the Knicks would run back the same core and hope for better results. Maybe they get aggressive in adding another piece and make Hart and McBride expendable. Robinson is likely still around just because they can’t afford to let them go. Does LeBron come to town? Are they a second apron team?
Good thing these qualify as bad dreams.
