Knicks-Heat series is showing who wants it more
Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler, second from left, passes the ball as New York Knicks center Mitchell Robinson (23), Quentin Grimes (6) and Julius Randle (30) look on during the second half of Game 4 of the NBA basketball Eastern Conference playoff semifinal, Monday, May 8, 2023, in Miami. Credit: AP/Lynne Sladky
MIAMI — The truth hurts.
Julius Randle, weary and depleted-looking, found this out late Monday night when he dared to say what everyone else was thinking after watching the Miami Heat outhustle the Knicks to put them on the brink of elimination.
“Maybe they want it more,” Randle said, his eyes looking down at a stat sheet. “I don’t know.”
It was a thought so honest, so true, that the fallout was almost immediate as the quote went viral. Hearing this was just too painful for Knicks fans after watching their team get outworked for four quarters in the 108-101 loss.
The frustration is understandable. Who wants to get to the Eastern Conference Finals more than the long-suffering Knicks fanbase, some of whom weren’t born when the Knicks last got there in 2000? How can Miami, a team that has been to the NBA Finals six times over the same time period, want this more than the Knicks do? How in the world is this fair?
The way the Knicks were beaten up by the Heat Monday was like getting beaten up by your identical twin. The Heat took everything that the Knicks are good at — all the effort plays that won over fans this season — and did it better. They dove for loose balls, they forced timely turnovers, they crashed the offensive boards in crunch time, they had big-time contributions from their bench and they hit demoralizing threes every time the Knicks got close.
This is the kind of over-achieving team that Knicks fans fell in love with this season, but that Knicks team was nowhere to be seen in Game 4.
While you can get down on Randle for the way he has played in almost every game this postseason, you can’t get down on him for stating the obvious. If the Knicks want to take this series to six games, they need to view what Randle said as a call to arms. They have to be the toughest, hardest working team on the court Wednesday.
They need to open strong and then hang on for dear life. They need to be the grittiest team in the Garden. They need to grab every loose ball, fight for every rebound. They need more from their bench and more from their coach.
Tom Thibodeau has to find a way to counter Miami's Erik Spoelstra. Spoelstra has not only made adjustments between games, he’s made adjustments that anticipate Thibodeau’s adjustments.
“To have a coach like that, that can make adjustments and tell us and foreshadow the future, it’s kind of creepy. But I’m glad he’s on our side,” Miami center Bam Adebayo said.
What’s really creepy is how the Heat could just sleepwalk through the regular season and then explode like this in the playoffs. The way Spoelstra has kept his team together despite injuries to Tyler Herro and Victor Oladipo is almost mindboggling. So much so that, when the Heat knocked the top-seeded Bucks from the playoffs, the Knicks' fans were almost giddy.
The Heat were supposed to be a very beatable team, a team with a great superstar in Jimmy Butler surrounded by a bunch of role players. The general thought was, if the Knicks could keep Butler from going off, they had a good chance of winning the series.
Well, Butler is 3-0 against the Knicks as their sole win came in Game 2 when he was out with a sore ankle. But it wasn’t Butler who beat the Knicks Monday night. The Knicks beat themselves, which is pretty much what Randle was saying. especially when you include some of his quotes that didn’t go viral.
“Got to find a way to step up and make those plays, keep this season alive,” he said. “ . . . [We] got to look within. How bad do you want it?”
We will all find out Wednesday night.
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.
