July of 2019 was a dark time for New York Knicks fans, who had gone, in the matter of a few days, from thinking they were going to land Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to winding up with Julius Randle as the marquee summer signing. It was, at the time, regarded as the latest -- and most embarrassing when Durant flat out said the Knicks were no longer "cool" -- in a line of swings and misses by a franchise that had finished a combined 166 games under .500 since their last postseason appearance in 2013.
But something was quietly happening, and it started with Randle, who came on a three-year, $63M deal that might have felt like a consolation prize but was actually the best thing that could've happened. The Brooklyn Nets wound up with the Durant-Irving debacle, while the Knicks, under the savvy guidance of Steve Mills and Scott Perry, started to think long term by way of shorter-term commitments. Just when it would've been the most Knicks thing to do to overreact to the Durant/Irving miss by selling their soul on some other shortsighted all-in deal, like when they maxed Amar'e Stoudemire in 2010 after whiffing on LeBron James , they started building through the draft while piling up powder by signing guys like Bobby Portis , Elfrid Payton , Taj Gibson , Marcus Morris , Alec Burks , Derrick Rose and Nerlens Noel to team-friendly deals to go around Randle, who was suddenly overtasked with being a go-to player in what appeared to be a no-win situation.
All Randle did was crash two Al.