30 NBA Players in 30 Days: Julius Randle
Day 9 of our countdown to the NBA season takes us to the Big Apple (posting this inside the New York Public Library!) to focus on the New York Knicks and their forward, Julius Randle. The Kentucky product entering his 9th season has a huge test for this season, to prove his value after a pretty disappointing year for him and the Knicks. After an impressive year in 2021 making his first All-Star team and winning the Most Improved Player award, Randle just couldn’t sustain that level of play last year with seemingly the same roster. With the newly acquired Jalen Brunson, and another year of growth for RJ Barrett on the horizon, Randle has to prove that he is worth the 4-year, $117M extension he signed after his All-Star campaign that starts this year. Although it’s not a huge hit on the Knicks’ salary, it is a huge bump in pay for a guy that was just seen as a quality rotation forward at best before he was an All-Star and led the Knicks to a playoff appearance. The 27 year old is entering the prime of his career, and there’s still room for him to improve certain aspects of his game in order to get The Garden excited about their basketball team once again.
Last year, Randle’s disappointment came from his offensive inefficiency. He posted 20.1 PPG, 9.9 RPG, 5.1 APG, 41.1 FG%, and 30.8 FG3%. The two stats that pop out are his shooting splits. His 41.1 FG% is the lowest in his career by far, and it is still almost 2% lower than his second lowest year. The 30.8% from beyond the arc is alarming considering last year he shot 41.1%. Now that year could also be a huge outlier since the second highest he shot from three was 34.4% in 2019, but a 10% drop off the next year is not a good sign. I think this just means that this upcoming year, he will hover around his career average of 33.2%, which seems about right. The Knicks’ frontcourt scoring is heavily relied on Randle’s efficiency, so it’s no surprise that the Knicks missed the playoffs after being the #4 seed in 2021. For a team desperate to find that next big star, Randle was looking like he could at least be the placeholder, but with the extension starting and the team failing to get a star like Donovan Mitchell this offseason, the responsibility has to fall on Randle again. Can he get closer to his career year, or was that just part of the wackiness of that season, where most players were missing stretches of games because of COVID-19?
I do agree that the Knicks do need to help him out for him to improve. A good amount of possessions for Randle are isolations, where he does not rank great in terms of how efficient he is in that type of offense. Maybe it was because of how well he was scoring in the previous year, or it’s because the Knicks are coached by Tom Thibodeau, who is well known to not be an offensive minded coach, but Randle should be put in spots on the floor in which he feels the most comfortable. He ranked 7th in frequency for isolation plays amongst all starters in the NBA, right between Luka Doncic and Spencer Dinwiddie, at about 21% of his touches. Even when ranking that high in isolation frequency, he scored 41.4% of the time with a 39.4 FG%, both stats being middle of the pack. Offensive sets that can get Randle rolling to the rim, or catching an entry pass on the block would create easier scoring opportunities. I’m sure that Brunson’s ability to run the pick and roll as a point guard will open up the creativity on offense and help Randle be less reliant on isolations.
New York is begging for some basketball relevancy. Randle has the personality and energy that the city embodies, and there is still a lot left in the tank for him to be a quality star for the Knicks. With the team’s consistent struggle to land a big free agent, they have no choice but to rely on the assets they have to revive the franchise.
