Through Knicks' gloom, Jalen Brunson says: 'I'm already excited about next year'

MIAMI — The ending to any season that doesn’t produce a championship and a parade is a somber occasion, and the Knicks were suitably sad and disappointed when their season finally came to an end Friday night at Kaseya Center.

They could take pride in what they’d accomplished, reaching the Eastern Conference semifinals and throwing a scare into the Miami Heat right into the final seconds of Game 6 before one more miscue ended the dream. But the pride was accompanied by the nagging reality that for most of the team, this final game was the kind of performance that will sting and stick with them far beyond the plane ride back to New York.

RJ Barrett was the first player to take the stage for his postgame interviews, and he couldn’t hide his disappointment with the ending and particularly his frustration with his own play.

“It’s tough. I think we had a really good year,” Barrett said. “We played really hard. We kind of gave everything we got. Even coming here, it wasn’t pretty, but we gave it our all and we came up short, so it’s tough.

“I played terrible. I’m very disappointed in how I played today. I don’t know. Just, it’s a lot right now. You fight for something, you want something so bad, and then I personally did not — I don’t feel like I played my best.

“It hurts, but it’s good to have experiences like these. You can learn from them. They’re a very good team, very experienced. They’re very poised. So you can learn from that.”

Barrett endured a 1-for-10 shooting night, was plagued by foul trouble for much of the game and was hardly alone in accepting blame. Julius Randle shot 3-for-14 and had three turnovers. Quentin Grimes was 1-for-6. Jalen Brunson had 41 points and shot 14-for-22, but the other four starters shot a combined 5-for-32. He had more field goals than the rest of his teammates combined (13-for-49).

So the first bit of offseason roster tweaking might be adding shooters.

The season was successful by any standard, and the front office tried hard to swing a deal for a star last summer, chasing Donovan Mitchell. The Knicks figure to do the same this summer.

“To me, when you lose in the end, there’s disappointment,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “But when we take a step back and look back at it in totality, which we will do, we’ll examine the things we did well, the things we didn’t do as well as we would’ve liked. We’ll formulate a plan and get the focus there so we can get better.

“This is playoff basketball, so we were one of the final eight teams. That’s not the goal. There’s a lot of work to be done. We understand that. But in the end, when this is all said and done, there will be one team standing. There will be 29 other ones that have fallen short.”

“I’m already excited about next year,” Brunson said. “It’s going to be fun. We have a lot to prove to each other as teammates. We’ve got to use this as we move forward. This is a great year for us. I kind of said it throughout this series: Even when things aren’t looking great, always got to keep your confidence. Obviously, we didn’t end the season the way we wanted to. Keep working on your game, keep getting confidence as a player and as teammates. We’ve got to keep sticking together like we did this year.”

The win for the Knicks was the establishment of Brunson as the centerpiece in his first season in New York. Part of that plan will be assessing the market and deciding whether to remain tied to Randle and Barrett.

Barrett, who was on the market last summer, excelled in the playoffs for eight straight games before Game 6. He’s 22 years old, and the Knicks will have to project his potential growth.

Randle, despite a third-team All-NBA selection, remains an enigma. Without a doubt, he’s talented, but he’s also frustrating to watch at times and has a moody temperament.

Could one of those players be packaged with some of the draft capital and pieces such as Obi Toppin or Immanuel Quickley — don’t forget the contract of Evan Fournier that the Knicks will be attempting to attach — in a trade if a disgruntled star surfaces on the market again this summer?

“Everybody is going back to zero,” Thibodeau said. “We have to start all over. You have to work crazy all offseason to get ready for next season. Yeah, we would still like to be playing. That’s why you do it. If you’re a competitive person, that’s what you want. We fell short. There’s disappointment, but I think to look at it and say we learned a lot, let’s use this as motivation and get better. That’s what you have to do.”

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.