Julius Randle's season-ending surgery latest tough blow for Knicks | No Cap Room

Yahoo Sports NBA writers Jake Fischer and Dan Devine discuss the news that the Knicks forward will miss the remainder of the year due to the shoulder injury that's kept him out since January 27. Hear the full conversation on “No Cap Room” - part of the “Ball Don’t Lie” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

JAKE FISCHER: Julius Randle out for the rest of the year. The Knicks announcing that he'll be re-evaluated in five months. A lot of reporting already coming out from friend of the program Fred Katz, our guy Ian Begley, saying that Randle was trying to do everything he could to avoid this.

But it's really unfortunate he couldn't get back out there. Of course, this was a team that looked like a real threat to win the Eastern Conference in that immediate aftermath of Anunoby coming from Toronto, that undefeated stretch to start. And just when Mitchell Robinson comes back and it looks like things are starting to shift in the right direction, a lot of wind taken out of the sails. So we wish Julius Randle a speedy, strong recovery. Dan, what's your initial reaction here?

DAN DEVINE: My first reaction is having watched the OG Anunoby and Julius Randle-- the full strength Knicks in January, which is the best New York Knicks team I've watched since the Ewing teams, I guess, in, like, the mid-90s-- there was a sample, there was a version of that team that we saw that had that kind of ceiling. It's why the Knicks went not all in, but why they made big swings at the trade deadline to go get Bojan Bogdanovic, to get Alec Burks, some reinforcements for the bench, to put them in a position where they looked, on paper, to be like the deepest team or one of the deepest teams in the conference.

And so there was-- Boston's the rabbit that ran out fast and no one's catching them. There was a feeling of, like, I wonder what that would look like if you had the size and physicality of Isaiah Hartenstein or Mitchell Robinson with Julius Randle and OG Anunoby up front, with the way that Jalen Brunson has been playing, with the shooting and the toughness on the wing. Like, I'd like to see what it looked like, right?

And we're not going to see that. But they're in that dogfight for 3, 4, 5. If they skid, potentially, in danger of even falling further than that, that would be a real disheartening set of circumstances. But it puts even more on Jalen Brunson's plate, and it's not like there wasn't a whole lot on there already.