Julius Randle's Shoulder: The Knicks What-If That Reshaped a Title Run
A dislocated shoulder on Jan. 27, 2024 ended Randle's Knicks tenure and set off a chain that landed New York a championship. What if it never happened?
Down 9.7 FPTS over his last 5 (2025-26), but the volume floor keeps him rosterable.
- Randle dislocated shoulder Jan 27, 2024; season-ending surgery in April
- Knicks were 28-17, 4th in the East when he went down
- Brunson averaged 31.5 PPG over the final 33 games without him
- Anunoby logged 41.6 MPG across first 7 playoff games
- Randle traded to Minnesota for Karl-Anthony Towns ~8 months later
Rewind to Jan. 27, 2024. The Knicks were up 17 on Miami late in the fourth, sitting at 28-17 and fourth in the East, riding the momentum of the OG Anunoby trade. Then Julius Randle grabbed his shoulder after a hard blocking foul on Jaime Jaquez Jr., and everything downstream shifted. The dislocation was first pegged at one-to-two months, then a re-dislocation in rehab forced season-ending surgery in April.
Randle never played for New York again. Roughly eight months later he was shipped to Minnesota for Karl-Anthony Towns, the move that eventually put a title banner in the Garden. But the fun counterfactual is simple: what if the kick-out to a wide-open Brunson happens instead, Randle stays upright, and none of this dominoes at all?
The Brunson Effect
Here's the wrinkle that makes this so interesting. Randle's absence is exactly what turned Jalen Brunson into a monster. Over the final 33 games he averaged 31.5 points a night, and seven of his 11 40-point outings that season came in the stretch run — including the 61-burger against San Antonio. If Randle stays healthy, Brunson never has to hero-ball, and maybe we never meet the version of him that carried the franchise.
The injury tax didn't stop there. Anunoby averaged a brutal 41.6 minutes across the first seven playoff games because the roster got so thin, and that workload almost certainly cooked the soft-tissue injury that gutted his postseason. A healthy Randle means less mileage, a quicker close-out of Philadelphia, and a different, fresher team walking into the Indiana series.
The Fantasy Read Today
For managers, the lesson lives in the survivors of that Knicks core. Josh Hart is the poster child for volume-driven fantasy value — he posted 12 points, 7.4 rebounds and 4.8 assists across 66 games last season (2025-26), good for 30.4 fantasy points per game and our No. 89 overall rank. The catch: he's slumping, down 9.7 fantasy points over his last five versus his season average.
Donte DiVincenzo, now in Minnesota, sits at No. 126 overall with 26.5 fantasy points per game last season (2025-26) and is also cooling, off 6.8 per game in his last five. Neither is a panic-drop, but the trend matters. Hold Hart through the dip given his rebounding-and-assist floor, and treat DiVincenzo as a matchup streamer rather than a set-and-forget. The Randle domino reminds us how fast one injury reshapes a rotation — stay nimble.
