The Knicks finished off a five-game, 10-day road trip on Saturday night with hardly the ending they had hoped for, blowing a 23-point second-half lead to the Portland Trail Blazers, a team that had already given up on the season.
But there was one glimmer of hope as the Knicks completed the 1-4 road trip and went through the trade deadline idle. Julius Randle — the Julius Randle who carried the team last season to the No. 4 seed in the East — finally appeared.
Randle, who had to answer questions about his own future with the team as his play drastically dropped from last season’s production, emerged from the trip with five-game averages of 29.