Football players have said it before. Hockey players, too. Basketball players also have said it, most recently Julius Randle after the Knicks’ second consecutive disturbing loss in Miami to put their season on the cusp of ending as soon as Wednesday night.

“Maybe they want it more.”

It truly is one of the more inexplicable admissions we’ve heard over the years in sports, and exactly zero fans of this usually hard-working and likable team should be happy — or encouraged about the rest of the series — after Randle made that startling admission when asked after Monday’s defeat by The Post about the Heat essentially beating the Knicks at their own game, with a decided edge on the offensive boards while beating them to one loose ball after another in their victories in Game 3 and Game 4.

Randle could have been talking first and foremost about himself in that regard.

He committed a team-worst six turnovers, and notably a few lazy passes, in Game 4. He also has been disengaged on too many defensive possessions in this series, ill-befitting the team’s leading scorer and lone All-Star.

Clearly, Randle fought through a late-season ankle injury and a tweak of that issue after aggravating it in Game 5 against the Cavaliers, sidelining him for the second-round opener. But Game 4 also was the first of his 13 career playoff games in which he shot better than 50 percent from the floor (8-for-13, 20 points). Only two of those field-goal attempts came in the second half.

We’ve heard Miami coach Erik Spoelstra and his players constantly talk about the vaunted “Heat culture.” Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart have been among the Knicks to credit the Heat’s system after each of these losses.

It’s hard to imagine Jimmy Butler saying an opponent “wanted it more,” especially after watching the six-time All-Star impose his will throughout this series despite sitting out Game 2 — the Knicks’ lone win — with an ankle injury of his own.

Mitchell Robinson also hasn’t made anything close to the impact he made in dominating against Cavaliers big men Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley in the opening round.

Robinson hauled in 11 offensive rebounds in Game 5 of that series; he has totaled 11 in the past three games combined.

Versatile guard Josh Hart rightly was switched back to the struggling second unit Monday night with Quentin Grimes starting for the first time since suffering a shoulder contusion in Game 3 against the Cavs. But Hart recorded just two rebounds in 22 minutes, his lowest output on the boards in 34 games (regular season and playoffs) since arriving in a deadline trade from Portland.

Led by All-Star center Bam Adebayo, the Heat held a 44-35 rebounding edge, including 13-8 on the offensive glass. One game earlier, Miami outrebounded the Knicks, 37-34, and essentially matched them on the offensive glass, with the Knicks holding a slim 14-13 margin.

“I mean, sometimes loose balls, you always say they’re 50/50 balls. They’re not always 50/50 balls.” Hart said after Monday’s game. “Sometimes they have a bounce in their direction, sometimes they have a bounce in our direction.

“I think we probably could have rebounded the ball better, especially that third-fourth quarter. We’re trying to make a run, we’re getting stops. But sometimes it’s just how the ball bounces.”

The Knicks will need to get more of those bounces beginning Wednesday night in their home arena, as Randle also put it, to “keep the season alive.”

They also can’t allow the Heat to be the team that “wants it more,” as if that should even need to be stated.

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One of the rare instances of an NBA team overcoming a 3-1 series deficit actually involved these two teams more than a quarter-century ago, when the Knicks flushed a 3-1 lead to the Heat in the second round in 1997.

That was the instant berth of a late-’90s rivalry that saw the teams meet in postseason play in four consecutive years.

Overall, teams have taken a 3-1 lead in an NBA playoff series 276 times, including six in the first round this year. Only 13 of those 276 have seen the trailing team come back to win the series. The Warriors also face a 3-1 hole in the second round.

Most recently, the Nuggets pulled off the come-from-behind feat in each of the first two rounds of the 2020 playoffs against the Jazz and the Clippers.

The Knicks have trailed 3-1 in a best-of-7 playoff series 14 times in their history. They are 0-14 in those situations.

The Heat have led 3-1 in a best-of-7 playoff series 14 times in their history. They are 14-0.

Can that double dose of ominous history be reversed?

“Get a win at home, that’s it,” RJ Barrett said of Wednesday’s Game 5 at the Garden. “Headed home, just gotta get back to being a tough, physical team that gets to the offensive glass and takes care of the defensive boards. We gotta take care of the ball a little better. I had three turnovers, and gotta do a better job of that. Things like that, we clean that up, we’ll have a good chance.”

Even with slumping sixth man Immanuel Quickley in a protective boot and unavailable Monday as the latest victim of the series-wide ankle epidemic, I didn’t believe Thibodeau’s quote about having “everything on the table” meant that he would dust off out-of-the-rotation veterans Evan Fournier or Derrick Rose in Game 4. (Although taking a chance with Fournier’s defense-stretching ability might have helped a team that nailed fewer than 10 3-pointers for the third time in four games.)

Instead, with the Knicks playing from behind the entire game, Thibodeau went with a shortened seven-man rotation in the second half. Obi Toppin played five minutes in the game and Miles McBride played four.

“Their bench hurt us in the first [half],” Thibodeau said. “They’ve got [Kyle] Lowry with their bench, so that’s a lot to deal with.

“So, how are we matching up? I knew they’d play Butler 40-something minutes. Bam was out there a significant amount of time as well, and really they played seven. In the playoffs, rotations shorten up. That’s the reality of it.”

One stat line lost amid Monday’s dispiriting loss was Brunson’s 32-point, 11-assist effort, despite continuing to receive treatment for an ankle injury suffered earlier in the series.

Brunson has scored at least 20 points in all nine postseason games, tying late Knicks legend Willis Reed for the second-longest streak in team history. Carmelo Anthony owns the longest such run for the Knicks with 16 consecutive games of 20 points or more in 2012 and 2013.