Julius Randle Experience is defined by a certain duality. Catch him for the right duration of two minutes and you’ll think he’s some lefty incarnation of LeBron, with the same mix of speed and weight, the bulge of the shoulder on the ball, the art of inside-out play. Catch him in the next quarter, and he’ll look like an angry 4-year-old running down LeBron’s body. There were many secrets hidden behind Randall’s talent. He is an elite athlete by NBA standards, maximally conditioned with rare agility for his size; Somehow this never translated into even average defense. One night he gave it all for 40 minutes and finally won in a sweat; In the next game, he will make the team lose in a thousand small ways.
Randle arrived in New York at a moment of franchise humiliation. In the summer of 2019, the Knicks were coming off a 17-win season and shipped Kristaps Porzingis, the closest thing resembling the future, to Dallas. But it was presented as a step towards a greater future. The trade cleared two maximum salary slots, and “from what we’ve heard, we’re going to have a very successful offseason,” said team owner James Dolan. informed in March. That July, he watched Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant sign deals in Brooklyn.
With all that captivating cap space, the Knicks landed the likes of Elfrid Payton, Bobby Portis and a Julius Randle. Shame hung in the air like the scent of the Gowanus Canal. But Randle spent five years shaking off the stink, lifting his team surprisingly into semi-contention, occasionally reproducing the stink, and actually contributing to a good Knicks team. Traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves This past weekend for Karl-Anthony Towns. At first my body rejected the news, as if in an immune response. Although I’ve gotten closer to the deal, I can recognize that initial reaction as a kind of unrequited love for this annoying but genius. Player.
When he arrived, Randall was a relative unknown. There were some highlights in his stint with the Los Angeles Lakers, but mostly it was that a contract year he played with the New Orleans Pelicans in 2018, which featured a flurry of sudden threes, created intrigue. Before the Knicks brought him in as their solace, he had never had to be the first option on offense. Predictably, Randle’s first campaign with the team in 2019-20 was one of turnovers and volume chucking. He was careless with the ball, inefficient from the floor, playing directionless basketball. He was intent on spamming a spin move – a doomed, cement-footed pirate that guaranteed the other team a transition dunk – which earned him the nickname “Beyblade” among scornful Knicks fans.
But Randle’s second season was good enough to convince those same fans that he has become an underpaid superstar. He attended camp, shared the workload with head coach Tom Thibodeau – the largest total of regular season minutes in the league – and refined his heavy brand of intimidating ball. Randle seemed to be thriving in fan-less, distraction-filled pandemic games. Without any warning, he became one of the best shooters Survive in the middle order; He made it even further from three, hitting 41 percent on 5.5 shots per game. He became the Knicks’ most talented passer throughout his tenure. For these efforts, he was named Most Improved Player and second-team All-NBA.
While Randle’s 2020-21 season is certainly the best from any of the Knicks this millennium, it was also a lesson in how quickly a switch can flip: After the season, suddenly the superstar was a void, walking off the field as the Knicks lost. Shot 29 percent in their first-round series against the Atlanta Hawks. Randle, like the Knicks, never had a good postseason, partly due to injuries, but perhaps also due to something more fundamental to his nature.
Randle followed up his supernatural 2020-21 by laying down a season-long turd in 2021-22. He could make many specific skills look easier, but overall, basketball never seemed to come very easy to him. Knicks fans screamed at him just as often as they screamed for him. He was a man at war with himself, and, taking stock of it all, it is incredible how many times he won. He brought this team out of disgrace and into a state of moderate respectability, and he did it with a roster that was never built to play out their strengths.
Randle’s life was made difficult due to his complete invulnerability to RJ Barrett, another lefty who liked to hide in the same areas of the floor and lumber into the lane. The Knicks insisted on developing Barrett alongside Randle, despite the fact that both players performed better without the other in the lineup. Randle never played with a center who could shoot at all, which would have been the most natural pairing with his hard-charging skills at the four. He never got a chance to share ball-handling duties with a league-average point guard until Jalen Brunson arrived and took over leadership of the team. Randle, who had been the center of the offense for so long, had to adjust to a superior talent with a similarly slow, probing style. He adjusted and eventually settled into his role as the deputy: shattering a defense that Brunson had already cracked, creating a healthy diet of catch-and-shoot threes for his point guard. .
When OG Anunoby arrived via trade in early 2024, he slotted straight into the lineup with his uncanny play-finishing and punishing defense. Suddenly this was the most complete Knicks lineup of Randle’s tenure. Randall himself went down soon after with a dislocated shoulder; While he attempted to rehabilitate in time for a playoff return, he had to undergo surgery in April, and has still not fully recovered. The Knicks were decimated by injuries by the second round of the playoffs, but when they lost, I felt confident that they should be fine and ran back That January squad. The Knicks then found themselves in a bind at the center position: Isaiah Hartenstein departed for Oklahoma City in free agency, and Mitchell Robinson’s injury was set to persist into the upcoming season. The vision of those January Knicks was gone, replaced by the vision of Brunson in the five-out vacancy. The team effectively replaced Randle with Towns, another All-NBA offensive talent with defensive and behavioral flaws that inspired a similar feeling of anger and fear among fans.
Thus ended the Julius Randle era in New York. When the Knicks were making deals for Elfrid Payton and Bobby Portis in free agency, their expectations were completely different. When Randle arrived, the team had won only 17 games. When he left, they had won just 50, and this intermediate progress was made possible by the strong, powerful man in fourth place. I’ll miss the wobbly drive, the effortless pull-up jumper, the skip pass in the air, the sloppy game-winner spiritually summarized His Knicks tenure. Heck, I might even miss the Beyblade spin moves.