Julius Randle accepts Game 4 benching because Knicks won
Julius Randle during Knicks media availability on Tuesday. Credit: Newsday/Barbara Barker
GREENBURGH, N.Y. — It wasn’t easy for Julius Randle to sit the entire fourth quarter of the Knicks' Game 4 win over the Cavaliers on Sunday.
But that doesn’t mean he was upset by coach Tom Thibodeau’s decision not to bring him back into the game.
“At the end of the day, I just want to win,” Randle said Tuesday in his first public comments since the benching. “You know, I’m a competitor. Obviously, I would like to play, you know. But like I said, it’s Thibs’ decision.”
Randle, who missed the last five games of the regular season with a sprained ankle, hasn’t looked like himself since the start of the playoffs.
Game 4 was his worst performance yet as he scored only seven points — he shot 3-for-10 overall and 0-for-4 from three — to go with two rebounds, one assist and one turnover in 27 minutes. Randle also struggled on defense, especially in the third quarter when the Cavaliers came out strong after being down by nine at the half.
When asked about his defensive effort in the third quarter, Randle replied: “That’s for you to judge.”
The judgment Thibodeau made to keep Obi Toppin, Randle’s backup, on the floor for the entire fourth quarter was a tough one.
“It's not easy, you know, like, he's going to finish 99% of the time,” Thibodeau said Tuesday. “The same thing happened when Jalen [Brunson] came back. His first game back, you know, I think it was Miami, same thing. We got on a run right about the same time, it was almost identical, to be honest with you. So those guys are going to be out there. We count on him, you know, but he missed an extended amount of time as did Jalen when he went through it.”
When asked about his ankle, Randle said, "It's fine.” Randle, however, is a player who is used to playing nightly — he played all 77 games until the ankle injury — and it appears there may be a problem getting back to where he was after taking a couple weeks off.
“Oh yeah, just getting my rhythm and legs back,” Randle said. “You know, I’m not really wanting to take time off or sit down so it’s new territory for me. I’d rather be trying to find it while we’re winning than losing, obviously.”
Randle said he and Thibodeau have not talked about the benching. Brunson said if Randle was upset by what happened, he did not show it.
“Obviously as a competitor you probably want to be out there,” Brunson said. “From the way I saw it, you couldn’t tell. His demeanor was great. As I said after the game, he’s been a leader on and off the floor. We rally with him, we roll with him. That’s our guy. Just how he composed himself was fantastic. He was as big part of us winning as anyone else, just because of how he was handling himself as a leader . . . When Julius is at his best, he’s very difficult to stop. I’m really not too worried about him.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
