With a chance to send things into overtime on Saturday night with two free throws attempts, Julius Randle missed the second shot to hand the Knicks their 19th loss of the season. But with the night he was having shooting, it shouldn't come as a surprise.

Looking at Randle's performance as a whole in the loss to the Pacers, it was a solid night for the power forward: 16 points, a team-high 12 rebounds--a whopping seven of which came on offense--and three assists.

But Randle had a very rough night shooting in this one, going 6-18 from the field on shots that included numerous missed layups.

Randle, who is shooting just above 66 percent from the foul line this season, was 3-4 on free throws before heading to the line with 0.1 seconds left on the clock. The first shot swished in, while the second hit off the back rim and went out to end the game.

"It's tough, very difficult" Randle said after the game on missing that last shot. "But we played hard, gave it everything we had and came up short, but we keep doing that and we'll win a lot of games. I think this is a turning point for us."

"We've just got to make our free throws," Mitchell Robinson said after the game. "...We can play a little bit better and I feel like we're going to get over this hump."

The Knicks showed a lot of heart and improvement on both ends of the floor Saturday, but hurt themselves when it mattered most.

"Very difficult," Marcus Morris said when asked how it felt to come so close in this game. "But we played a really good game, played hard, competed, came down the stretch, so we gave ourselves a chance to win.

Popular in the Community