ORLANDO, Fla. — Julius Randle attempted more free throws than he had in any other game this season Wednesday night, yet he showed his frustration with the officiating several times throughout the Knicks’ road loss to the Thunder.
That came in the form of not getting back on defense at least once or pleading his case with the referees about the contact they didn’t call on multiple occasions.
“I mean, I shot [a season-high] 13 free throws,” Randle, who sank 10 of those attempts, said after the game. “It’s tough to get every call. Did I think a few were missed? Yes. As far as consistency, I had a respectful conversation with [referee] James [Capers].
“It was just a little frustration with the consistency with the calls. But like I said, I got 13 free throws, so it’s hard to really complain. They’re not going to get every one right. They’re not perfect. You know, those are little things that happen in the game and you’ve just got to move on and keep playing. They’ll get more right than they get wrong.”
Randle said he was told by Capers that he didn’t get a foul call on one first-half drive because he’d extended his arm, but “later on in the first half Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander] did the same thing, extended and stepped through. He got the bump and one, they called the foul.”
Through Wednesday, the Knicks ranked sixth in the NBA with 24.6 free-throw attempts per game.
Still, Tom Thibodeau also said he believed “a lot of contact” against Jalen Brunson was ignored by the refs throughout the game, although Brunson — who sank all five of his free-throw attempts — declined to comment on the officiating afterward.
“Next question,” Brunson said.
“We got to the line 30 times. But Jalen, I thought — I wanna look at the film. I thought he got hit a lot,” Thibodeau said. “He should have, I think, been at the line a lot more than he was.”
Instead, Brunson chose to lament the Knicks turning the ball over “way too much” — committing 18, one off their season-high.
After allowing 129 points — including 36 apiece by Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams — Brunson also believes the Knicks defensively “still [have] a lot of room for improvement, but definitely better than we were two weeks ago.”
The Knicks have allowed 122.8 points per game in going 5-4 in the nine games since Mitchell Robinson injured his ankle on Dec. 8.
In their first 21 games, they’d allowed 108.7 per game.
“There’s things you have to look at. There’s context to everything, right?” Thibodeau said. “So I’m looking at the teams that we’re playing, where they rank offensively, and we’ve had a pretty challenging schedule, thus far.
“The thing that I like — I thought we did some good things [Wednesday]. We read the ball pretty well initially, but we didn’t finish. We read our switches well. We veered when we should’ve veered, but we probably held onto it a little bit too long. But the rebounding — you got smalls on bigs — the rebounding was really good. So that part of it, I was very pleased with. The whole idea is to be in position to win, and that’s what you’re doing.”
The Knicks (17-13) will face another young and athletic team on Friday night at Kia Center, where the Magic (18-12) have posted an 11-4 home mark.
Wednesday’s loss to OKC dropped the Knicks to the No. 7 play-in position in the Eastern Conference standings, a half-game behind the Cavaliers and one game behind the Magic.
“I always think we can do better on both sides of the ball, and that’s what we’re striving for is that improvement every day,” said Thibodeau, whose team also will play the Pacers on Saturday in Indiana. “The thing is, you’ve gotta eliminate all the ways in which you beat yourself first. So you’re on the road. You talk about the importance of your defense, your rebounding and having low turnovers. Those three things put you in a position to win. So I felt like we fell short with not taking care of the ball [against the Thunder].”
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