New York Knicks forward Julius Randle suffered a hard fall Saturday and dislocated his right shoulder in the final minutes of the team’s 125-109 win over the Miami Heat, a source told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
X-rays did not show much damage, the source said, but an MRI exam was scheduled for later Saturday.
With just over four minutes remaining in the contest, Randle drove to the basket when Miami wing Jaime Jacquez Jr. slipped defensively in hopes of getting a charging call on the Knicks star. Randle remained on the Madison Square Garden floor for a moment writhing in pain, then his teammates helped pull him up using his left arm.
When he got to his feet, he made a face and informed the Knicks’ training staff that he could not move his right arm. The team’s head trainer Anthony Goenaga appeared to try to help Randle put his right hand back in its socket, but a bruised Randle ran back to the locker room, resulting in him being unable to take free throws. Jaquez foul.
It was a clear sign that Randle, one of the NBA’s strongest and most physical players, was in an unusual amount of pain.
“You knew when he did that (it could be serious),” said coach Tom Thibodeau, who spoke to the Knicks earlier in the day, saying he had a clear sense of how serious the injury was. “He’s a guy who plays with things, and that’s what you love about him. He’s a warrior.”
Asked how concerned he was about the star forward, Thibodeau said, “Very.”
“It was an, ‘Oh—‘ reaction,” Jalen Brunson said of seeing Randle go down. “We don’t want to see that from anybody, especially with how he’s been playing. He means a lot to us. So for him to go back out there, obviously it’s not ideal.”
The timing of Randle’s injury is less than ideal for the Knicks, who have been the NBA’s hottest team since the calendar turned to 2024 and went 12-2 in that span with Saturday’s win. Randle, coming off an All-NBA campaign last season, is an All-Star candidate this season and is averaging 24.0 points, 9.2 rebounds and 5.0 assists per game for the fourth-place Knicks.
It was not immediately clear how much time Randle would miss due to the injury.
When Brunson played for the Dallas Mavericks, he dislocated his right shoulder during a game in February 2020 and missed several weeks before undergoing surgery to repair a torn labrum on the same arm.
Brunson said, “It was very painful; I can’t lie.”
