Knicks went from legit championship contender to ‘what if’ on one fateful Julius Randle play

It’s impossible to run from the what-if portion of this dreadful development, so it’s best to say it up high. There was a crystallized moment of this basketball season when if you were a Knicks fan, you were allowed the greatest gift of all: belief. Actual, genuine, legitimate belief, not colored by rose-colored spectacles or fanciful dreams.

We can identify the precise moment, too.

It was with 4 minutes and 28 seconds remaining of a game on Jan. 27 in which the Knicks led the Heat, 115-98. Madison Square Garden had spent the previous two hours in a state of unfiltered delirium. The Knicks were splattering the defending Eastern Conference champions just two days after battering the defending champion Nuggets by 30.

The Knicks were as hot as they’d ever been in the new millennium, and were playing their best ball in decades, in the midst of a month in which they would go 14-2.

One second later, Julius Randle drove to the basket. He was fouled by Jaime Jaquez Jr. He fell, hard, on his right shoulder. The Garden’s roar was reduced to a whisper.

It was as if all 19,812 people knew, in their hearts, that something had changed.