The evolution of Julius Randle

The Los Angeles Lakers have looked resurgent under new head coach Luke Walton’s free-flowing offensive scheme. No one has reaped the benefits of the schematic shift away from Byron Scott’s predictable Princeton sets and Kobe’s ball dominant chucking more than Julius Randle. Simply put, Randle was in a hellfire situation last year, racking up over 20 percent of his possessions in isolation with no spacing, and struggling with confidence with inconsistent role and minutes. We talk about the importance of role optimization for player development all the time on The Step Back, and Randle is visible proof that circumstance and context matter greater in the evaluation process.

Don’t get me wrong, Randle still wasn’t good last year regardless of his surroundings. He was incredibly inefficient as a scorer and finisher without contributing much playmaking, and his defense was pretty atrocious. So what, specifically, has contributed to Randle’s renaissance this year? How much can be attributed to Walton’s presence and how much is Randle’s skill-development and potential positive regression to his mean? Coming off a stellar triple-double performance against the Nets, now is an opportune time to explore how Randle has improved.

Randle has made three incredible strides this year over the first twelve games: overall intelligence, passing and finishing. He’s become very adept at heady plays like seeking out bodies to screen in transition to generate uncontested looks for LA’s shooters, especially Russell:

Randle’s perimeter handling ability is perhaps his greatest skill outside of rebounding, and pairing his grab-and-go transition ability with intelligent plays like this makes for a chaos-creator:

Walton definitely deserves credit here for putting Randle in transition handling opportunities more frequently. Los Angeles is currently fourth in the league in pace at 102.8, up from 98.2 and 13th last year per ESPN.com. Randle is really benefiting from handling in space and finding the Lakers’ shooters in those large spaces.

Randle’s passing vision has also improved, no doubt a testament to Walton. His assist rate is up from 11 percent last year to 20.3 percent this year, per Basketball-Reference. Randle was always a capable big space transition passer on easy reads like this:

But his vision has evolved. A lot of his impressive passes still come in transition, but even some of those are dynamic decisions on the move at high speeds:

I’m not sure Randle could have made the above pass last year. His improvement as a decision-maker has also extended over to the half-court, albeit less frequently. His ability to exploit 4-on-3 opportunities when teams trap Russell out of the pick-and-roll due to his scheme changing off the dribble three-point shooting is crucial, and we saw that play out last night against the Nets.

Russell made three 3s in succession, and the Nets reacted to this by trapping him in the pick-and-roll. Mozgov can make himself available when utilized as the screener in this setting, but he’s not a legitimate scoring threat and doesn’t have the fluidity to create on short rolls. Randle is a different story, as seen here by his patience on a 4-on-3 off the Russell trap to find Mozgov in the dunker position:

This doesn’t look overly complicated, but it’s legitimate improvement from last year and his days at Kentucky where he posted an outlier poor .56 assist/turnover ratio.

Randle’s biggest area of improvement this year however has been his finishing efficiency. Compare last year’s shot chart to this year’s, and you immediately see the impact area and shift:

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He’s finishing around the rim from 0-3 feet at an absurd 81.4% clip this year, up from 56.8% last year, again per Basketball Reference. Some of this can definitely be attributed to schematic changes. Last year, Randle finished 21.8 percent of his scoring plays in isolation at 0.72 points per possession, good for the 30th percentile per Synergy Sports. This year, his isolation finishing plays have been sliced almost in half to 12.7 percent, and he’s averaging 0.92 points per possession, in the 92nd percentile.

In conjunction, Randle finishing as the roll man in pick-and-roll has jumped from 9.4 percent of his possessions (0.73 points per possession, 10th percentile) last year to 10.2 percent (1.31 points per possession, 86th percentile) this year. His drives per game are also up from 4.1 last year to 4.5 this year, per NBA.com, and his corresponding field goal percentage and pass percentage on drives have increased from 39.9 percent and 12.8 percent to 55.9 percent and 18 percent respectively. Basically, Walton is finding ways to get Randle in bigger spaces on the move, increasing his shot quality and aiding his efficiency.

Walton doesn’t get all the credit here however, as Randle just looks more comfortable finishing around the rim, and he’s made some technique alterations. My biggest issue with Randle’s finishing, outside of not having a right hand, has always been that he gathers too much, giving away the advantage he gains with his burst with the ball. He’s just not a vertically explosive athlete in traffic, and he can’t afford to just speed into the lane, stop and try to finish over length. Even though he got fouled on this play, this sequence from last night’s game reflects this point:

Randle has a half step on Lopez turning the corner, and not only goes back to his left to try to finish but he stops and gathers instead of simply going right into Lopez’s body on the move. There was too much of this last season, and it hurt his efficiency.

Randle needs to use his body and forward motion at high speeds to dislodge opponents around the rim, and from the eye test he’s done that more this year. This drive and dislodge on Scola is a good example:

Randle is a consistent floater or mid-range jumper away from being a huge problem for a defense, especially when paired with Russell’s pick-and-roll proficiency on short rolls. His floater still looks unnatural for the most part:

And again:

I’m still not sold on his touch, but you can’t argue with the results thus far. He shoots a really hard ball, which doesn’t bode well for his long-term shooting upside, but he’s at least flashed the ability to look competent hitting a mid-range jumper as he does in the following clip in an advantage situation created by Russell:

Overall, it’s only been 12 games, but Randle looks like an entirely different player this year. He wont sustain this level of finishing, but even if he ends up around league average that’s a huge win with his playmaking for others looking like a real thing. Randle can really eat up space given to him with his handle, and putting him in active advantage situations in pick and roll mitigates his lack of shooting in having to get by defenders playing five feet off on closeouts.

If he continues to read the floor in the half court and find teammates on the move, he has two-way value with his switching prowess. I was moderately high on Randle coming out of Kentucky mostly due to his handling ability, and soured on him last year mostly due to his finishing technique and passing deficiencies on top of the minus shooting.

This season, Randle has been Los Angeles; best player thus far, and is showing how players can get better based on skill development and surrounding circumstance. Randle now looks like a building block for the Lakers’ future rather than a huge question mark, which is an enormous win for Los Angeles as they don’t project to be bad enough to fetch a top three pick this year. Moving forward with a core of Russell, Ingram, Randle and Clarkson, the Lakers’ future looks bright.

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