A group of New York Knicks fans frustrated after their season-ending loss to the Miami Heat in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinals took their fears out on Julius Randle, who posted his poster outside Madison Square on Friday night. Garden daubed and stamped. The incident occurred when fans were leaving MSG’s waiting party for Game 6, in which Randle was not performing well.
Randle, a two-time All-Star and All-NBA Third Team selection this past season, scored just 15 points on 3-of-14 shooting, a statistic that is a paltry 1 in 7 from a 3-point range. The lack of production from Randle and several of the Knicks’ other stars doomed them to a 96-92 loss to end their playoff run despite the heroism and individual brilliance of Jalen Brunson, who scored 41 points to win a . to enforce close game.
After the game, a group of fans at Madison Square Garden were seen stomping on a poster of Randle that had already been defaced with the words “Trade me!” accompanied by a smiley face with a sticking out tongue.
Randle, who signed a four-year, $117 million deal to join the Knicks in 2019, has had a complicated relationship with New York’s demanding market. In 2022, Randle responded to boos from Knicks fans by making a thumbs-down gesture after racking up a 25-point comeback to victory, a gesture he later said was one to “shut up” .
Fan frustration with Randle over the Knicks’ exit from the playoffs was not out of the blue, as the team’s All-Star was disappointed despite the Knicks as a whole having their best postseason run in an entire decade had. In two rounds of playoff basketball, Randle only averaged 16.6 points and 8.3 rebounds on 37.4 percent shooting.