Rebound lessons

Lindor has some PR tips that could help Randle

THE METS have an off-day Monday, just before they embark on an intriguing threegame series against the Dodgers, the best team in baseball, the team they likely will have to figure out if they want a crack at their sixth World Series. The Knicks are less than a month away from the start of training camp.

You know what would be a good idea, and something that could make the next nine months around here a little extra fun?

For the Knicks to send the corporate jet to Dallas on Monday morning, send her back to New York with Julius Randle on board. Let a limo pick Randle up off the jetway. Bring him into Manhattan for lunch, doesn’t matter where, whatever Randle’s in the mood for. And introduce him to his dining partner: Francisco Lindor. There, the two men can spend a blissful couple of hours eating good food and exchanging ideas. Specifically, it would be terrific if Lindor can detail how it is not only possible but plausible to not only turn around your own performance in the big town but also the way you are perceived there.

No, the paths Randle and Lindor have taken aren’t identical. Randle has sandwiched two aggravating years in New York around one glorious one, 2020-21 — when he was the NBA’s Most Improved Player, when he was second-team AllNBA, when he led the Knicks to a stunning fourth-place finish in the East and captured a large segment of New York’s basketball imagination at the same time.

But we can surely see the similarity between what Lindor endured — some of it self-inflicted — in 2021 and what Randle wound up dealing with in 2021-22. Both players, who both have played at All-Star levels, were disappointing and inconsistent and worse. Both let it affect them in identical ways. It may have been Javy Baez’s idea to do the thumbs-down thing at Mets fans, but Lindor happily went along with it. And a few months later Randle brought that same unfortunate gesture to Madison Square Garden.

This is what’s known as pouring gasoline on a fire.

And it was costly. Citi Field turned on Lindor as if he had shown up to work wearing a Phillies cap. The Garden almost completely allowed itself to forget Randle’s brilliance and proceeded directly to its reliable get-thisbum-out-of-townand-make-it-snappy phase. The notion that either player could rehabilitate himself seemed illogical.

And yet, Lindor did just that.

Lindor accepted all blame for his awful maiden voyage in New York, embraced playing for Buck Showalter, and seemed to enjoy the return of media to the clubhouse, the better to stand and be counted every day, the better for everyone to see that he really is the kind of charismatic player — and leader — he was billed to be. To see and hear Citi Field now when Lindor does anything, it’s remarkable — even a deep fly ball that was caught Friday night was accompanied by cheers. If that can happen to Lindor, it can happen for Randle. And for all comparable reasons. Like Lindor, Randle craves being a leader, and though he sometimes grew weary of shouldering all the blame of last season, he certainly welcomed his fair share. He has shown a capacity for excellence — maybe not quite NBA elite, but a level just below — with winning instincts, just like Lindor. He is also quite personable. The Knicks’ media relations practices often preclude him from showing this in full, and it would be wise of the team, assuming similarly relaxed NBA media protocols, to let Julius be Julius, unplugged. Now, he would have to play better. But with a true point guard in Jalen Brunson at his side, and a past proven trust between himself and Tom Thibodeau that was similar to Lindor/Showalter … Yes. Let’s have a summit meeting, star to star. Someone order a few appetizers, maybe a bottle or two of Pellegrino. Let Lindor remind Randle of all the good things available to a star athlete in New York — something Randle already knows but may have forgotten. Let the shortstop tell the forward that it really is possible to click your star back on high wattage. Lindor may already be the MVP of the ’22 Mets. A lunch like that? He would be the leader in the clubhouse to be MVP of the ’22-’23 Knicks, too