You can bet that Julius Randle just staked his claim to a nice, long stay in New York City with his 2020-21 season-long performance. He proved that he could, in fact, be the centerpiece of a successful franchise, leading the Knicks to a No. 4 seed via a 41-31 record. He won a highly coveted award, the Most Improved Player Award, and landed on the All-NBA second team. He became one of just six players in history to average 20 points, 10 rebounds and at least a 40 percent 3P% with over 100 attempts.
To NBA legend Reggie Miller, however, that's not good enough to be the No. 1 player for a Knicks team that truly wants to compete for a title, and Randle's playoff performance was the evidence to that viewpoint.
"They need a superstar above Julius Randle," Miller said (via Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News). "Because what the playoffs showed to me was a lot of his flaws. And Atlanta kind of highlighted that when they pressured him.
"He struggled to shoot the 3 — which he was great during the regular season. And it kind of showed his deficiencies. And if they’re going to build around him, that’s one thing. To me, I think they need a superstar."
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In five games of the playoffs, Randle averaged 18.0 points, 11.6 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game on .298/.333/.852 shooting splits, which demonstrates Miller's point that the Hawks were able to expose his struggles. However, if it was just a cold stretch and the real Randle is the one that we saw in the regular season, we could be having a very different conversation right now. This, of course, is taking the opposite approach as Miller, but it's worth it to play devil's advocate for that little hypothetical.
In any event, it wouldn't surprise all too many people if the Knicks were seeking out that top-tier star to combine with Randle, and Miller said the name that pretty much every team has in its sights.
"If, for instance, they had a Damian Lillard along with a Julius Randle, that’s something where you can really say, okay, the Knicks are loaded and ready," Miller said.
What the Knicks would need to move in order to acquire Lillard would undoubtedly include RJ Barrett, which the Daily News' Kristian Winfield had reported this past week. If their package would be more enticing than, say, a Ben Simmons-centric package from Philadelphia is a different question altogether. So too is whether or not Miller feels a secondary trade target — like Cavaliers combo guard Collin Sexton or OKC budding star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — would be enough to push the Knicks over the top. Does it need to be a top-tier, established presence? Or could Randle combine with a young and intriguing guard, like the two listed above, to turn things up a notch at MSG and seriously compete for the top seed in the East?
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These are all difficult questions but ones that the Knicks front office will have to face in what could be a massively important offseason. And then there's the possibility of hanging around for one more year before that star-studded free agent class of 2022 arrives. Again, the Knicks have options. It's just a matter of taking the right path and executing the moves that need to be made.
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