Julius Randle has been an afterthought his entire career, which is no fault of his own. In his one year in college at Kentucky, he averaged 15 points and 10 rebounds and led a team whose next best player was James Young all the way to a national title game and fell just short to UConn that year. At the draft that year, he was taken 7th overall by the Lakers, and out of all the players taken before him, only one has made an all-star game, with that lone player being Joel Embiid.
Randle was injured a majority of his rookie season with the Lakers but then progressively improved each year after, and in 2017-2018 with the Lakers had a season where he averaged 16 and 8. But in the following offseason in free agency, no one wanted to pay the young man what he deserved, so he decided to bet on himself and sign a 2 year, 18 million dollar deal with the Pelicans and the second year of that deal had a player option.
After having the best season of his career, posting averages of 21, 8.1, and 3, he finally got the contract he deserved and signed with the Knicks for 3 years 62 million. This deal came with much-underserved scrutiny in the offseason because it was thought the Knicks would try to sign one of the many superstar free agents of that offseason. Once the Knicks were unable to land Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Kyrie Irving, or even Jimmy Butler, they “settled” with Julius.
His first season in New York was underwhelming, but after hiring tenured coach Tom Thibedeau, Randle again took his game to another level. This year he has improved his playmaking and committed to getting others involved in the offense. He would commonly get tunnel-vision on offense and take difficult shots through double or triple teams, but this year he is making the correct reads, and the team is benefiting as a whole.
The Knicks have been the surprise of the NBA world this year and are currently sitting as the fourth seed in the east right now, and that, along with Randle’s stats of 23, 11, and 5.5, were enough to earn him his first all-star bid.
Randle’s game has been overlooked throughout his career because it better suits the 1990’s so front office’s just assumed playing Randle for large chunks of time won’t contribute to wins. We can now obviously see that this assumption was wrong, and all it took was for a smart coach to come in and tailor a team’s play to Randle’s style. This entails slowing down the game and giving Randle time to scan the floor on the catch to make a plan to get to his spot and either get a look at a shot or create for his teammates around him.
This season, four left-handed players made the all-star game, Ben Simmons, Domantas Sabonis, Julius Randle, and Zion Williamson. Except for Simmons, the other three on the roster are all extreme throwback players who make the bruising power forward relevant again in the NBA.
Randle’s incredibly bulky shoulder may suggest that he gets most of his shots at the rim through clearing out space with his body, but that is not the case. He can bang with the NBA’s strongmen down low, but he uses his frame very well to get space to get off his sneaky efficient jump shot.
Although Randle prefers to keep his game inside, he has shown a huge improvement in his shooting beyond the arc this year and is shooting a career-high 42% from three on 4.6 attempts per game. This makes the defense have to come out on the big man, opening up lanes to drive and get downhill, where he is close to impossible to stop with his 250-pound frame (I think this is a bit low, the man is a monster).
Knicks fans thought they got the short end of the stick when they signed Randle in a year where they thought they were set to sign superstars, but now we see Knicks fans on Twitter comparing Randle to Chris Bosh. I think it may be a bit too soon for these comparisons, but seeing Knicks fans excited about an all-star is a nice change of pace from what we have seen in recent years from the franchise.
