Knicks All-Star power forward Julius Randle seems to be on the mend following his offseason arthroscopic surgery on his left ankle last month. As Belle Fraser of The New York Post writes, Randle shared a new workout video to his personal Instagram account.
Randle sat out the final five contests of the 2022/23 regular season after spraining his ankle in a late March bout with the Heat. He then re-aggravated the ailment during the closeout bout of New York’s five-game first-round series win over the Cavaliers.
In the regular season, the 28-year-old averaged 25.1 PPG, 10.0 RPG, and 4.1 APG during his second All-NBA season with the Knicks, who finished with a 47-35 record and the No. 5 seed in the East last year. His numbers regressed mightily in the playoffs, in part due to the ankle ailment. Randle averaged 16.6 PPG on 37.4% shooting from the field, along with 8.3 RPG, and 3.6 APG.
There’s more out of New York:
- The Knicks have shored up their wing depth this offseason, but will still face an uphill battle in a stacked Eastern Conference. Zach Braziller of The New York Post (subscriber link) predicts how the Knicks will fare this season, speculating that five Eastern teams will finish ahead of them.
- The Nets’ NBAGL team, the Long Island Nets, have traded the returning player rights for swingman Alondes Williams to the Heat’s NBA G League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce, in exchange for the returning player rights of shooting guard D.J. Stewart to the Nets, the Skyforce announced in a press release.
- Oft-injured Nets guard Ben Simmons is now completely healthy after rehabbing from the back nerve impingement that caused him to miss the last six weeks of the 2022/23 regular season, sources inform Ian Begley of SNY.tv. The 27-year-old anticipates that he will be able to fully partake in Brooklyn’s training camp in September.
Difficult to peg where the Knicks fall in the hierarchy of the East. The top 3 teams are of course Bucks, Celtics and 76ers (as long as they keep Harden).
Miami has lost two starters in Strus and Vincent. Lowry is another year older and doesn’t seem to have enough in the tank to have a consistent 82 game stretch. I think the heat will once again be 6-8 seed.
The Cavs despite playing poorly in the playoffs look to be the better team. Their defense kept the Knicks under 100PPG during the playoffs and they shored up their biggest weakness which was shooting/spacing. The Knicks did a great job of packing the paint and preventing Don and DG to do anything under the 3 point line and the Cavs had no one to make them pay for all those bodies in the paint. With Niang and Strus, it’ll be much more difficult to do so. Hoping to see this match-up again in the playoffs this season. Interested to see this team battle it out again and the storyline with Mitchell will be even greater with his contract situation unfolding.
With all these stories about being so healthy Ben has no excuse to play poorly or miss games next year.
If he is healthy and back to pre-pandemic form, the Nets should contend for a 4 or 5 seed if everything else remains the same in the East.
Every Simmons comment starts with an IF
I like the Nets. They have a very solid team, but even still, I don’t see them finishing higher than the 6th seed. Outside of Bridges and Spence, they don’t have another player that can consistently get their own offense. Ben Simmons will be nothing more than a glorified role player if he ever makes it back onto the court.
Idk, he might be healthy right now, but even with surgery, back issues don’t always just go away. I’m not a doctor, but I’m sure it also depends on what type of back injury he had..
I just know when you’re playing such a physically demanding sport like basketball, back injuries can be extremely debilitating. For Simmons sake, he better hope it wasn’t anything that could become a reoccurring issue; otherwise, it could just take a minor tweak, and his career could be in jeopardy..
Knicks are not done. One more trade …..
Just one more.
DeM DeR …….
We’ll believe it when we see it Ben …..
Find your cojones ….. waay .
No.
Also, listening to one of his teammates talk, I’ve never heard a player say that they were happy they had to get back surgery…
Basically saying that since soo many people thought Simmons was full of sh4t, it was basically like, “see, I’m not lieing I am really hurt,” when the Nets doctors recommended he got surgery after looking at his back…
It was just weird hearing that from his teammate. Which, honestly, I don’t know whether he was saying HE was almost relieved to find out Ben needed surgery, or whether he was saying Ben was relieved, idk…
I can imagine I’m sure probably both were a bit relieved. The teammates to know Ben wasn’t just lieing and he was actually injured. Then, I’m sure it was a bit relieving to Ben as well to find out he wasn’t just a hypochondriac, and also a large part had to be so the rest of the world could see he wasn’t just faking it..
Either way, hopefully, with less of a spotlight on them, now the Nets and Ben can just come together and ball. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how well this team can perform when they’re all healthy and on the court together.
Their two 1st Round picks, Whitehead and Clowney, could be two solid players they added to their core, and I really like their main trio of Bridges, Johnson, and Claxton.
I think for the Nets it’ll mainly come down to sorting through their other role players to find the right combinations in order for them to be successful.
Day’Ron Sharpe, Royce O’Neale, Dennis Smith Jr., Lonnie Walker, Darius Bazley, Cam Thomas, Spencer Dinwiddie, and Dorian Finney-Smith…
That group, plus their two 1st Round picks equals a solid, albeit unspectacular 13-man roster. It’ll be interesting to see how their rotations work out, and if their rookies can earn any playing time…
Now that Toppin is gone. Randle can stop the drama, please. Time to become a winner. Knicks can take a step forward. If Randle plays more team ball. Stop with the constant iso. Play like it’s 2020-21. And RJ keeps progressing. More consistency in his game. And better shooting #s.
You add DeM DeR to that. Then you have a contender. DeM is a bucket. Who just fits right in at the 2. And we wouldn’t have to give up any core players.
“Stop with the iso, but our best chance to win includes adding another iso-dominant player!”