Early returns on Julius Randle are mostly positive, but retooled Timberwolves have issues
At the very least, it is going to take time for the team to re-establish its defensive dominance. The post Early returns on Julius Randle are mostly positive, but retooled Timberwolves have issues appeared first on MinnPost.
Julius Randle looks and plays like a stack of rectangles.
From head to shoulders to hips on down, 250 pounds are packed in squared edges through his 80-inch frame. Physically, his inescapable position in the game of basketball is power forward.
The classic Randle play has the Timberwolves recent acquisition with the ball near the foul line, initially seeking contact with nearly every defender he can draw to him. If his back is to the basket, he dribble-hops in, varying an arched back and a jutted butt to locate the opponent. Facing up, he pauses or teases lateral movement with crossover dribbles before either rising for a jumper or lowering his shoulder at an angle that creates collision enough to put the defender off-balance without getting whistled for a charging foul.
He will penetrate this way until and unless he is stymied. Then comes the art and craft, bound up in the decision to shoot or dish the ball. With his back to the basket, his favorite move is to deke left and pirouette right, like a block spun on its edge, often shoveling a bank-shot off the glass with his left hand, but with the option to pass the ball to a player at any point along the spin cycle.
Facing up is a little clumsier and brutish — he wants the foul and will bait for contact so long that he occasionally must resort to a shot or pass that has the slow velocity of a last gasp. But he’s enough of a pro to snap off a pass or simply bully through to the basket with enough frequency to keep defenses honest.
On defense, Randle is neither a sieve nor a stalwart. The deployment of that rugged physique is not as refined as it is on offense; he can move his feet, square up, box out, and dutifully rotate on switches or help defense, but his overall presence is not nearly as noteworthy as his offensive contributions.
It’s a package that has made Randle an All-Star in two of the past three seasons and enabled him to score more than 19 points, grab more than nine rebounds and average nearly four assists per game over his 10-year career.
But it is also an approach, and a skill set, that can be as difficult to fit into a team’s overall scheme as a stack of rectangles.
The Timberwolves have already had the recent experience of molding their team around a prolifically talented but stubbornly distinct set of skills when they acquired center Rudy Gobert in the summer of 2022. Fitting Gobert alongside fellow center Karl-Anthony Towns (who moved to power forward) in a double-bigs frontcourt was indeed a fitful endeavor, requiring an entire season (their unfamiliarity exacerbated by injuries and illness) before the pair flourished in tandem with the ascendant stardom of Anthony Edwards in leading the Wolves to the Western Conference Finals last season.
KAT had signed an enormous contract before a more stringent collective bargaining agreement put teams whose payrolls were significantly over the luxury tax into a straightjacket when it came to roster management and maneuverability.
That was one reason KAT was traded. The other was justifiably equal compensation in the form of Donte DiVincenzo, who answered the need for a volume three-point shooter and solid backup point guard on a bargain contract; a first-round draft pick (albeit heavily protected) from Detroit via the Knicks; and Randle.
On balance I thought the roster flexibility and DDV, plus whatever the pick winds up becoming, was enough by itself to simply regard Randle as a cheaper experiment relative to KAT. If it doesn’t work out, there will be chances to trade him in February, and even if he exercised his player option for next season, it is more than $20 million less than KAT is getting in New York that season, and then the Wolves could take him off the books. Meanwhile, there would be salary cap space to lock up both Gobert and Naz Reid as the primary frontcourt pairing long term, keeping Naz with his peers Ant and Jaden McDaniels in a second timeline on the books.
My skepticism about Randle was focused on the lack of spacing from having two isolation scorers — him and Ant — in a half-court offense with Gobert, especially given coach Chris Finch’s longtime preference for a more spontaneous, flow-oriented scheme.
It has been only four games — and 140 total minutes of Randle on the court for the Wolves — thus far, but I have gained a lot more respect for what he can do and why he and Finch have effusively praised each other ever since Randle was introduced to the fan base last month. The fit may still prove problematic, but that certainly isn’t Randle’s fault. By the nature of his play and his off-the-court comments, he has been a willing partner and in many ways his best self while trying to fit his rectangular skills into a rounder template.
The beginning wasn’t pretty. In an ominous echo of a mostly-lost preseason between Gobert and KAT in 2022, Randle logged little more than a half-game of preseason action while still recuperating from shoulder surgery that sidelined him with the Knicks from late January through the rest of the 2023-24 season and postseason. Not surprisingly, there were a few moments during the Wolves 2024-25 season opener versus the Lakers in Los Angeles when Randle displayed the lassitude of a cautious, clueless newcomer.
From Finch and Ant on down through the roster, the directive went out to Randle: To start this process, you play your game and the team will fit around you. Finch has been especially encouraging. Before the third game — the Wolves’ home opener against Toronto last Saturday — the coach even included Randle’s playmaking prowess in his discussion of the team’s depth at point guard. I scoffed at the elevation of this isolation-oriented scorer into a poor man’s version of the departed Kyle “SloMo” Anderson, the team’s previous forward-cum-point guard, and a Finch favorite.
But in Tuesday night’s game at Target Center against the Dallas Mavericks — a rematch of last season’s Western Conference Finals — he lived up to the hype with four assists in the opening 7:14 of the first quarter. His natural tendency to hog the ball and wait for defenders before dishing was truncated by more of a pass-first mentality, coupled with a pair of high screen-and-rolls that freed up Ant for open jumpers on a dribble-handoff and weave, respectively.
By the end of the game, Randle had seven assists and seven rebounds to go with his 20 points on 7-for-13 shooting. Each of a trio of three-pointers splashed through, raising his long distance percentage to 62.5% (10-for-16) on the season, nearly double his career accuracy of 33.3%.
Two of his three turnovers were astute passes. The first included two interior passes to Gobert that Rudy flubbed before getting his shot blocked on the first and it poked out of his hand on the second (this after Rudy got a slam and a free throw out of another nifty Randle dime). The second turnover was when Randle and DDV were racing up the floor in transition and DiVincenzo bobbled the feed while being heavily guarded. The final turnover was a bowling-ball charge through Mavericks center Dereck Lively II.
Along with the passes to Gobert, perhaps the most encouraging assist was Randle hitting point guard Mike Conley perfectly in stride with a kick out pass as Conley set up for a three-pointer. Conley has been struggling to make baskets all season and needed a confidence boost of the sort he so-often provides to his teammates. The pass came as Randle was just entering the paint, with three defenders converging just six seconds into the possession and thus 18 seconds left on the shot — a quick, synergistic decision.
Dallas went on to defeat the Wolves by the score of 120-114. Frankly, it shouldn’t have been that close. The game was tight throughout the first half mostly because Ant was hot and the Mavs corresponding team leader, Luka Doncic, was not. (Ant had 24 points on eleven shots by halftime; Doncic 13 points on 13 shots.) As happened in last season’s conference finals, which the Mavs won four games to one, Dallas was the more fundamentally sound team and rose to the occasion in clutch situations.
After the game, Finch lamented the Wolves inability to rebound at their defensive end and the team’s frequency of turnovers. One of these was more important than the other.
Minnesota turned the ball over 20 times, resulting in 25 points for Dallas. The Mavs turned it over just nine times, and it cost them a mere five points. By contrast, the Mavs grabbed only one more offensive rebound than the Wolves (12-11) and lost the rebounding battle overall 42-40. Yes, many of their offensive rebounds came at key moments — Dallas had 10 second-chance points in the fourth quarter — and shot more accurately, meaning that there were fewer chances to get offensive rebounds. But even then, the total second-chance points represented only a seven-point deficit for the Wolves, 23-to-16. Turnovers were more costly.
But there is an even greater concern moving forward, and unfortunately it’s related to the Randle trade. With KAT in New York, the Wolves lack a true backup center in their 9-10 man rotation, and it has had a damaging effect on the team’s defense. Last season, and again on Tuesday, Dallas had the advantage of two closing, crunchtime scorers in the backcourt they could lean on — Doncic and Kyrie Irving — compared to just Ant in that role for the Wolves. On Tuesday, the Mavs potent center tandem of starter Daniel Gafford and the backup Lively II created another clear depth advantage.
I underestimated the impact that KAT’s absence would have on the defense, mostly because he has been an at-best mediocre defender for most of his career. But he has had nine full years of experience at center — the first seven as the starter, the last two as the backup when Gobert went to the bench. And a primary reason why Finch was in the running for Coach of the Year last season was the way he tailored the defensive rotations in a manner that bolstered KAT and Gobert both individually and in tandem.
Now, with KAT gone, the plan is to go with Naz and Randle in the frontcourt when Gobert sits, but it’s understandable that they are enduring a steep learning curve. The KAT trade was made official barely four weeks ago, on Oct. 2. Until then, Naz had been sculpting his body down to 235 pounds (per what he told me in the locker room this week) in preparation for logging minutes at small forward in a huge frontline beside Gobert and KAT. As for Randle, according to basketball-reference.com, he spent less than 5% of his minutes playing center during his five seasons with the Knicks, and has logged 17% of his career at center in his 10-year stint in the NBA.
After the Dallas game, Finch’s succinct appraisal was “The defense has to be a lot better.” The stats bear this out. After leading the NBA in fewest points allowed per possession for almost the entire season last year, the Wolves currently rank 13th. The most glaring dropoff is points allowed in the paint. Last season they ranked second at 45.4. Through four games this season, they are 28th at 55 — nearly 10 more points per game! Compare that to the 5.7 extra points they are allowing off turnovers (16.3, 15th best last year and 22, 26th best this season) and the 3.1 extra second-chance points they are allowing (12.7, 4th best last season versus 15.8, 16th best this year) and it is clear that rim protection is an issue.
Finch said he was satisfied with the non-Gobert defense against Dallas, noting that the switching — which is a dominant component of the scheme — was executed well. But Finch also went with a small-ball lineup for four minutes midway through the fourth quarter — Randle at center and Jaden McDaniels at power forward — and the extra activity and quickness resulted in Minnesota cutting six points off the Mavs’ lead. (To be fair, Doncic was resting a majority of that time.)
At the very least, it is going to take time for the Wolves to re-establish their defensive dominance, and in a brutal Western Conference where there is little margin for error or readjustment, time is precious.
The problem with unfamiliarity and acclimation is that it requires a domino effect throughout the 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-player combinations. For example, Randle should rightfully be lauded for leading the Wolves in assists over the first four games. But is that enhanced playmaking affecting Conley’s slow start, as he adjusts to being off the ball and in less control of the offense to start the season? Or, on the flipside, the Wolves inability to get stops on defense is most glaring during the scant minutes Joe Ingles has been on the court. But Randle has shared more playing time with Ingles than anyone else on the team, which has an impact on his own defensive stats when the sample size is this small.
Time will continue to yield more answers — and change the answers along the way. But right now the Wolves are 2-2 and their two losses have been against teams that thoroughly outplayed them at key times in the paint — the Lakers and the Mavs. Upcoming are two matchups with fearsomely talented big men, Nikola Jokic and Denver on Friday night and Victor Wembanyama and San Antonio on Saturday night.
Respect to Julius Randle for his dedicated, unselfish play thus far. And yet more will be required.
Britt Robson
Britt Robson has covered the Timberwolves since 1990 for City Pages, The Rake, SportsIllustrated.com and The Athletic. He also has written about all forms and styles of music for over 30 years.
The post Early returns on Julius Randle are mostly positive, but retooled Timberwolves have issues appeared first on MinnPost.
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