Everyone stubs their toe, and everyone has the same reaction after a good old fashioned toe-stubbing. Every nerve ending of every toe that’s ever been stubbed screams its way up its toe-owner’s body and out of its toe-owner’s mouth in a primal, grunting expletive. Patrick Ewing grunt-swears when he stubs his toe. The Queen of England grunt-swears when she stubs her toe. The Dalai Lama grunt-swears when he stubs his toe. 

It’s as universal as it is instinctual.

Certain Knick players elicit a similar reaction out of certain Knick fans, with a near-identical pang of fist-clenching pain immediately followed by a colorful yelp. Two such players are former Knick Tim Hardaway Jr. and current Knick Julius Randle. Both have trademarked their respective offensive blunder. For Hardaway, it’s an ill-timed, early-clock, needlessly-deep, 3-point clanger. For Randle, it’s a mid-post kamikaze spin-cycle into a waiting labyrinth of opposition limbs.

Watching THJ and Randle execute one of their trademark blunders is like stubbing your toe on the bed leg, except your toe is your prefrontal cortex and the bed leg is a terrible offensive possession. And it happens a handful of times a night. Four nights a week. Week after week after week.

But there is a problem with this analogy. Randle and Hardaway weren’t merely “asked to do too much.” They were blindfolded, bundled into the back of a van, unceremoniously dumped at Madison Square Garden, and let loose in front of 19,000 unsympathetic locals with a very simple instruction: be significantly better at basketball than you’ve ever been. What’s so complicated about that? Be much better than you are. For some reason they couldn’t, and they weren’t, and wrath was incurred.

There is a category error with our perception of THJ’s second stint in New York and Randle’s mud-dragged first season: both guys are third bananas judged through the lens of first banana expectations.

In 2017, Hardaway Jr. was signed to a four-year, $71 million offer sheet in restricted free agency, with a view to flanking a blossoming Kristaps Porzingis. It was a generous deal, but the thought process of former Knicks GM Steve Mills wasn’t entirely bonkers. KP as first banana. THJ as second banana. Not completely bonkers. But KP’s ligaments flaked and Hardaway Jr. was thrust into an outsized role that swallowed him whole.

Last summer, Randle was signed to a three-year, $63 million deal as a panicked plan-D when plans A, A, and A went up in smoke. It was a reasonable deal. Randle was a former lottery pick coming off a career year for the New Orleans Pelicans. Crucially, though, he had that career year as a third banana behind the dreamy Batman and Robin one-two punch of Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday.

Like Randle in New Orleans, Hardaway Jr. had a career year in Dallas this season, contributing positive minutes to a feisty Mavs team in the bubble as a useful third banana behind Luka Doncic and the occasionally available Porzingis. Admittedly, it does help having one of the most naturally gifted shot creators in the world spoon feeding you catch-and-shoot threes. Hardaway Jr. is essentially a 2-year-old at dinner time for the amount of work he has to do for an open look; sitting in a high-chair, with a bib on, covered in yogurt, not a care in the world as Luka spoons tasty uncontested triples into his face. 

Doncic’s genius aside, THJ’s reformation is telling for Randle, who is crying out for a reduced offensive burden, ideally shifting back to his pre-NY role as a potent and punishing finisher rather than an impotent and inconsistent creator. 

This season, Hardaway Jr. and Randle are the 62nd- and 63rd-highest paid players in the NBA, netting $18 million each per year. This is perfectly acceptable third banana money. They only look like overpays on the surface, after predictably underwhelming production in a miscast leading offensive role that usually comes with a substantially higher price tag.

For many fans, free-agent-to-be Knicks Twitter darling Fred VanVleet represents a similar problem. FVV has never been a bonafide first — or even second — banana in his time with the Toronto Raptors. But he’s a clear floor-raising third banana, and paying him somewhere in the $20 million range wouldn’t necessarily mean falling into the first banana expectations trap. (See: the best FVV free agency breakdown on the interwebs.)

Malcolm Brogdon is the perfect analog here. He signed a four-year, $85 million deal with the Indiana Pacers, leaving behind the cosy productivity cocoon of the biggest first banana in the league: Giannis Antetokounmpo. He joined a Pacers squad that, without an injured Victor Oladipo, was comprised of a handful of fellow third-ish bananas in Domantas Sabonis, Myles Turner and TJ Warren. Of course, the Pacers are head-to-toe more talented than the Knicks. But even so, it’s encouraging that signing a cerebral, floor-spacing, two-way point guard and asking them to take on a larger offensive burden — but not be the guy — isn’t doomed to end in told-you-so failure.

Randle’s struggles as a first banana shouldn’t bleed into his potential success as a third banana. He can be productive, and, thankfully for us Knicks fans, much less painful to watch. He just needs reinforcements. The bubble performances of shorthanded teams like the Pacers, Magic, and Nets — to varying degrees — demonstrate how collections of good-not-great players can be competitive.

Piling up third ‘nanas is also a pretty good way to position yourself for that primo apex ‘nana when the time is right.

In summary: Julius Randle is not a lost cause, bring me Fred VanVleet, and I stubbed my toe just before writing this article.