3 big takeaways from Knicks’ aggravating loss to Suns
1: The inconsistencies of RJ Barrett and Julius Randle are killing the Knicks
In the midst of one of the worst slumps of his career, RJ Barrett has really been hurting the Knicks with his lack of offense over the last few games. While Barrett has supposedly been playing the last couple of games sick, this does not excuse how he has been forcing shots on offense.
This game was not nearly as bad in terms of Barrett forcing offense, but it was still not a good game at all. In 27 minutes of play, Barrett had 12 points, four rebounds, and two assists while shooting 3-of-11 from the field and 1-of-3 from three, continuing his awful stretch.
In addition to the issues surrounding his three-point shot, Barrett has even had issues hitting simple layups. While I’m sure he will break out of this slump soon, he still needs to be better.
It is year four now, and while Barrett is only 22 this does not mean that Knicks fans can baby him. Just like we all hold players like Julius Randle accountable, it is time to do the same with Barrett.
Speaking of Randle, he has been fantastic offensively in recent games, however, this was not the case against the Suns. He only put up nine points, six rebounds, and two assists while shooting 4-of-11 from the field and 1-of-4 from three.
However, I am not going to talk about Randle’s issues on offense, as he has played quite well on that end for the majority of this season. Instead, we’re going to talk about Randle’s defense, which has been absolutely dreadful this season.
While he has had some moments of putting some great effort into his on-ball defense, his ability in the off-ball has been some of the worst I’ve ever seen.
After almost every game, we see clips surface of Randle just sitting around in the paint completely ignoring his man, which causes major complications for New York’s defense. While this version of Randle is better than last year where we saw no offense AND no defense, he still must be better.
Hopefully, as the season goes on we see major improvements from both of these two, as we all know that the Knicks only go as far as Randle and Barrett will take them.
