Julius Randle’s Injury Changes A Cleveland Cavaliers-New York Knicks Matchup

When New York Knicks forward Julius Randle went down with an ankle injury on Wednesday in a game against the Miami Heat, it changed a possible playoff series against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Randle is in the midst of an All-NBA season with a career-high points per game average, career-best shooting on two-pointers and success shooting from three on career-high volume. He’d be durable too, playing in every Knick game until the ankle injury that has ended his regular season.

Per the Knicks, Randle will be reevaluated in two weeks. Not return — reevaluated. That means he’ll be reassessed after the play-in games, but before the first round starts. It’s possible he’ll be back, but “reevaluated” doesn’t scream “he’ll actually just
just
be back in two weeks”.

The Cavs have dealt with Randle this year — and seen what he can do. He hit eight threes in a Knicks win over the Cavs earlier this year. Those threes shaped the game.

“Watched the second half of their Miami game to see a little bit,” Cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said Friday before Cavs-Knicks. “It’s a lot of their second unit guys, Quickley playing that faster tempo. Obviously with Toppin being able to run the floor and play at tempo. So I would expect it to be a little bit of a faster game. But again, we’ll see what happens.”

The Knicks, as Bickerstaff said, will play differently without Randle. When Randle went down against the Heat, they went with Obi Toppin at the four for a stretch before settling into a smaller lineup that stretched out the offense around a center. Playing Toppin has benefits, but going small is a way to really juice the offense and put a lot of the Knicks’ best players on the court.

Bickerstaff said it helps the Cavs to have a matchup with the Knicks so close to a likely playoff matchup.

“Yeah, I mean it’s always nice to have a close proximity in your preparation of understanding what people are and what their strengths are and what they feel like,” he said pregame. “Because you can watch a lot of tape on guys, but a lot of times you can’t judge the speed or the shiftiness, those things defensively, understanding their length and their coverages and pick and roll.”

It’s a particularly interesting strategy against the Cavs, who start two bigs (Evan Mobley at center, Jarrett Allen, who missed Friday’s game, at center) but have otherwise into shifted into playing smaller with one of the bigs on the floor and some combination of guards and wings.

In a playoff series, this will play out in one of two ways. With Mobley and Allen on the floor, if New York starts small and leans that way for most of the game, that puts Mobley into a roamer roll where J.B. Bickerstaff puts him on the Knicks’ worst shooter. On Friday, when these two teams played, New York started Toppin alongside Robinson, opting for the more traditional look.

The biggest change from earlier Cavs-Knicks matchups is that Mobley spent a lot of time guarding Randle. Randle’s eight three-pointer game was against Mobley, but Randle had issues navigating Mobley’s length and timing inside the arc. The Cavs, in a seven-game series,, would have lived with Randle taking a ton of three-pointers vs. him getting into the paint after he screens for Jalen Brunson or gets the ball on an entry pass.

The other way this plays out is that the Cavs, in their own small ball era, shouldn’t be too thrown off by the Knicks’ smaller approach. As the rotation currently stands, Lamar Stevens functions as the third big with Cedi Osman playing up at the four too. Those are not especially large lineups.

That said: the Cavs did have issues on Friday. With Isaac Okoro out with knee soreness, Lamar Stevens drew Brunson at the point of attack. Brunson had no issues attacking Stevens and shredding Cleveland’s defense after getting into the paint. The Cavs are going to need Okoro healthy by the playoffs.

The Knicks also were red hot from three. he Knicks finished with 15 three-pointers. On the year, the Cavs are 2-16 on the year when their opponent makes 15 or more threes. New York takes threes at roughly a league average rate on the year — they could get hot like this again enough to make the Cavs uncomfortable. With Allen and Okoro back, the Cavs should also expect to be much better defensively than they were Friday. Friday was by the Cavs’ third-worst defensive game of the year by as significant margin as measured by defensive rating.

Maybe this discussion is rendered moot if Randle comes back. But Friday was a look at a future where Randle isn’t back.