Tom Thibodeau followed the same script that has led to so many Knicks losses this year, pulling Immanuel Quickley right as he was energizing the team late in the fourth quarter, and the Knicks predictably notched their 43rd loss of the season.

I have a confession — I only watched this game once. So take the following analysis with a very strong grain of salt.

The Knicks lost a tough one to the Hornets, 125-114, in a game that all but eliminated them from the play-in race. This game was the perfect encapsulation of how the Knicks, projected to be an above-.500 team battling for playoff seeding before the season, underachieved so badly. What happened? Let’s dive in.

Not quite right

Let’s be fair: from the opening tip, the Knicks, as a team, didn’t have the edge we’ve been seeing from them lately. Gone was the crispness with which they had been running plays and making rotations defensively, replaced by the lethargy of a team that assumed a win was coming, reminiscent of the team we saw to start this season. The Knicks never lagged too far behind the Hornets on the scoreboard. In fact, they led after the first quarter and their biggest deficit was just five points before settling at three when the halftime buzzer sounded. But the whole way through it felt like the Hornets were lapping the Knicks in quality.

Some will want to blame Julius Randle, and he deserves plenty of blame. There’s obviously no way of knowing for sure, but it certainly feels different when Randle is out there. The team moves slower and is less connected. Everything that happens happens on Randle’s watch, even when the play isn’t run through him. It’s impossible to miss the mammoth-like gravitational pull he has on the team. Even on a night like last night, when the backups struggled early on, you immediately see the vibrance increase the second they’re freed from his presence. 

As I stated above, it’s impossible to know if this is real or not. Maybe I’m seeing what I want to see, or what I assume to be true. We simply don’t have a consistent or large enough sample to know what the team looks like without Randle. And that’s the ultimate problem. This entire season has been one giant self-fulfilling prophecy by the head coach. Tom Thibodeau knows the answers. He knew the young players weren’t ready earlier in the season, and their great play recently doesn’t invalidate that. Nope, it confirms it! Thibodeau waited until they were ready to let them loose. That’s development. And the same goes for Randle. The stats may say the Knicks are almost ten points better with him off the floor than on it, but Thibodeau has done his absolute best to make the evidence as blurry as possible.

The chicken or the egg?

At the half, 21-year-old rising star RJ Barrett had 18 points on 6-11 shooting as the Knicks trailed by just three points. What followed was one of the disappointing halves Barrett has played in quite some time. And most of it came on the defensive side of the court, where he looks, frankly, lost. 

Barrett has been alternating the primary wing assignment with Burks as of late, depending on how the opponent profiles. When Barrett gets the assignment, like he did in Miami last week, the effort is there. Even as Jimmy Butler got pretty much whatever he wanted against Barrett, it wasn’t due to a lack of focus or effort on Barrett’s behalf. Butler made some tough shots to go along with being a fantastic player, capable of getting to his spots in the face of solid defense.

But a harrowing trend as of late has been that focus falling by the wayside as responsibilities decrease. Early in the season, Barrett struggled with getting beat backdoor as teams exploited his overeagerness. Barrett was desperate to prove his acumen as a defender and brought the energy on a nightly basis. That feels like an eternity ago. Now he is getting beat backdoor due to a lack of awareness. Last night Evan Fournier and Burks took the lead defending (I use that term very lightly) LaMelo Ball, who torched them. This left Barrett off the ball the majority of the game, where the Hornets made an obvious effort to attack his lack of awareness. They were successful.

How much of this is his fault? Probably a lot. But if I could, I would bet that the two third-quarter touches he got played some part in his defensive indifference as well. He’s spent his whole life being involved on a consistent basis. Offense can impact defense and vice versa. Let me be clear; I am not condoning this. Barrett has to know he can’t win by himself. He’s going to have to learn to consistently contribute even when his offense isn’t going. But he’s also just 21 years old and recently emerged as the team’s best player; the Knicks need to make a more concerted effort to keep him involved when he has it going or — at least in the immediate future — we will continue to see volatile fluctuations in his defensive attentiveness. 

The decision

With the Knicks trailing 82-76 at the 3:39 mark of the third quarter, Immanuel Quickley stepped on the court for the first time in the second half. Up to that point he had played just 9:51 total. Quickley’s first half shift was, relative to his recent production, subpar. The second half didn’t start much better,.as a 6-point deficit doubled to 12 early in the fourth quarter. 

And then it happened. Quickley erupted in a way that was familiar and, on some level, expected by Knick fans. This wasn’t Quickley hitting a couple of shots. This was a momentum shift where Quickley’s presence infused energy into every aspect of the team. Gone was the lethargy, replaced by pace, connectivity, and exuberance. Suddenly, the Garden was alive. 

No Knick impacts the game quite like Quickley, especially as his skill and confidence in his passing have grown. The team plays together and with a purpose. And it was no different last night. When Quickley made a floater while drawing a foul, the Knicks had closed the deficit to two points. Most fans were ecstatic. I was too. Until, in the corner of my eye, as the referees reviewed the foul call, I saw Fournier stroll to the scorer’s table. Surely he couldn’t be coming in for Quickley, right?

You know what happened. Quickley was pulled and the life disappeared from the Garden. The team stopped running offense with purpose. The players’ energy dipped. The fans seemed less engaged. It was like the second he checked out, the game was over. Perhaps Thibodeau realized it as well, because he re-inserted Quickley into the game a few minutes later, but it was too late.

In total, Quickley played 23 minutes — 208 players in the NBA average 23 minutes per game or more this season. It gets worse, though. Because those 23 minutes Quickley played actually increased his season minutes per game mark, up to 22.4, which ties him for 221st in the league with De’Anthony Melton and Cedi Osmon. 

I could rant about Thibodeau’s single shift rotations and how a bench player has, effectively, no path to playing major minutes without playing the last 12-plus minutes of a half. I could begrudge Thibodeau for continuing to start Alec Burks, a journeyman wing who has no business playing point guard or defending next to Barrett and Fournier. 

But while these qualms have merit, the crux of the issue is much, much, simpler: Immanuel Quickley needs to play more. He’s not only the team’s best point guard, you could make the argument he’s been the team’s most important player this season. The Knicks are -6.6 per 100 possessions when he sits, a number no other Knick comes remotely close to. They are +6.0 when he plays, giving him a +12.6 net rating on the season. That isn’t just good, or random, it’s the sign of a player who impacts winning at an elite level. And this says nothing of the fact that Quickley is only 22 years old and the results of this season have ceased to matter. 

Last night’s ending especially did not matter. It was a movie franchise with 42 sequels. The Knicks slowed down the pace, put the ball in Burks’ hands — who played 41 minutes despite having as many field goals as turnovers — and their offense faded into oblivion. The other team ran actual sets and scored at will. The lead grew. Which is why, as the seconds on the clock ticked away with the scoreboard reading Hornets 125, Knicks 114, and the realization that the 34-43 Knicks just lost a game where Alec Burks played more minutes than Obi Toppin, Deuce McBride, and Jericho Sims combined sinks in, the importance of a game you were so emotionally invested in just 20 minutes prior so easily faded away. Like, as the great Roy Batty once said, tears in the rain. 

So yea, I only watched this game once. It’s not that I don’t care about or love this team. I love the Knicks, and I love the players and coaches. But when your team’s highest paid player can’t be bothered to care, and your team’s head coach can’t be bothered to play the right guys, it’s tough as a fan to bother at all.