Did he know it then? In his first NBA game? When the rookie drove to the hoop and there was a “pop” sound, followed by his foot collapsing beneath him? Broken tibia. Out for the year. His coach told reporters after, “Adversity tests the true character of a man ... He was kind of crying, and I just told him to stay strong and that it’s going to make him a better basketball player.”
Did he know it the following season? The next year — his real rookie season — he averages a double-double in just 28 minutes a game. A year later, the minutes hold steady while the assists double. A year later, the guy who broke in with a broken leg plays all 82 games, puts up 16 and 8, shoots 56 percent from the floor. The team that drafted him can extend the 23-year-old. They let him go. Don’t even trade him; just “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” while they replace him with someone 10 years his senior. Nobody complains when that senior is LeBron James — partygoers don’t care how the piñata breaks, so long as they get some of that sweet stuff inside.
Did he know when he signed with New Orleans? The Pelicans already had a binary star system established, with Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday. Is there even room for a third to shine? Yet shine on this crazy diamond does, leading the Pels in points while finishing second in rebounds and assists and quadrupling his 3-point makes. Once again, faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, he overcomes; once again, his only reward is the next obstacle.
He signs with New York right as Kevin Durant is showing and telling the world the Knicks aren’t “the cool thing” in NYC. He’s gone from playing under Kobe with the Lakers and AD with the Pelicans to co-starring along with Marcus Morris and RJ Barrett at Madison Square Garden. His first year in New York is all losses, turnovers and boos. Before the year is up, Morris is traded for a draft pick; by the time it’s over many Knick fans wish the same for Julius Randle. Predicament, meet perseverance.
He bounces back and then some. Sets career-highs in minutes, points, rebounds, dimes. 3-point makes and percentage, too. Named an All-Star for the first time. Makes All-NBA Second Team; even earns more votes than LeBron. Signs a team-friendly contract extension. And yet ...
One year later, he’s explaining that the thumbs down he gave the home fans was standing in for another finger he wished to extend to them. One year later he’s reinvented himself yet again, returning to All-Star and All-NBA glory while spending less time behind the arc and more bludgeoning fools inside it. With five games left in the regular season, he badly injures his ankle. He fights to be back for the start of the playoffs, and does, though he’s nowhere near 100%. At the end of the first round he re-injures the ankle. Struggles through it anyway. Holds off on arthroscopic surgery until that offseason, obviously costing him months he’d normally spend training and conditioning. Still. He played a major role in the Knicks’ best year in a decade. Surely that earned him some grace.
He struggles mightily with his shooting his first couple weeks back. New York turns on him like he’s Reggie Miller. He bounces back. He always does. The Knicks best month of play in years, maybe decades, ends when he crashes to the floor against the Heat and separates his shoulder. He never plays another minute in New York, lost for the rest of the season. Jalen Brunson gets a new deal. Josh Hart gets a new deal. OG Anunoby gets the biggest deal in franchise history. The man who planted the first seed? Who tilled the fields alone for years? He gets traded on the eve of training camp.
Randle’s a Texas kid. He left Plano for the University of Kentucky, a college basketball capital. Spent most of his NBA career in Los Angeles and New York City. What did he think about Minnesota? How did he feel building up an iconic yet inept franchise, only to be cast aside once they’d reached a good cruising altitude? Nobody asked. Nobody cared. That’s the business he’s chosen.
Julius Randle got off to a rocky start in Minnesota
Timberwolves fans didn’t exactly welcome him with open arms. Randle replaced a 10-year cornerstone in Karl-Anthony Towns. And it didn’t at all feel like it’d been a basketball trade; all the talk was that the Wolves hoped Randle would opt out of the one year left on his deal and become a free agent, freeing Minnesota to invest that money into depth at other positions. After everything he’d done in his career, Randle had seemingly amounted to little more than someone else’s obstacle, financial if not schematic.
In February he suffered a groin injury that knocked him out for a month. The timing of the injury was especially cruel, as the Wolves had won five straight before Randle got hurt; they went 5-8 without him. Once he returned they promptly ran off eight wins in a row and finished the season 17-4. They faced the Lakers in the first round. LeBron’s still there, still 10 years older. Randle played the best postseason series of his life in helping the Wolves upset L.A. One round later he was matched up against Draymond Green, an all-time defensive great. Randle ate him up and spit him out.
The Timberwolves are down 1-0 to the Thunder, but still just four wins away from their first-ever NBA Finals. Most are picking Oklahoma City to advance. They won a league-best 68 games and boast the probable MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, someone even Anthony Edwards says is on another level. They’re the best defensive team anyone’s seen in a rrrreally long time, with size and length and depth for days. They won Game 1 by 26, running away with it in the second half. Edwards appeared to hurt his ankle early and struggled after, scoring his second-fewest points of the playoffs. To paraphrase Coleridge: WTF, WTF everywhere, and not much time to think.
And yet ... there is a man. A man who made 69% of his shots on a night the rest of his teammates made 29 percent, and who did so as an equal opportunity bludgeon: Randle made all three of his shots while defended by Alex Caruso, arguably the single most dominant and versatile defender in the league, and all three he took against Aaron Wiggins; he made two of three shots each against Chet Holmgren and Cason Wallace. He took six 3s and five went in; he took six free throws and five went in.
The walls keep rising in front of Julius Randle, and he keeps knocking them down. Amidst the tomes of analysis and gossiping these Western Conference finals will produce, don’t lose sight of what Randle’s career reminds us of. Sports is fun for the same reason life is: because no matter how much you see or know or think you know, surprises are as constant as consistency. Sometimes something works out simply because the person who wants it to wants it badly enough to make it happen.
Randle began his NBA career breaking his leg. Now he’s breaking playoff defenses and the brains of people who thought his postseason struggles were more about what’s between his ears rather than the twice-wrecked ankle he tried to play through. Bryon Scott was right: adversity tested him and he’s come out better for it. We’re each of us capable of the same.