Julius Randle is rewriting his narrative

Randle has absorbed a ton of flack over his career, much of it deserved. He, like many high draft picks, has had an outsized opinion of his own abilities, manifesting in a tendency to pound the air out of the ball as he crashed and bashed his way into double teams or launched ill-advised contested jumpers.

To be clear, Randle is no scrub. He has made three All-Star appearances and has a pair of All-NBA nods to his name. Prior to this season, he had averaged 20+ points in five of his previous six campaigns, the odd one out falling short by just half a point. He can clearly score. The issue has always been efficiency and his habit of looking off teammates to call his own number. In New York, that would mean trying to score over practically an entire defense.

After a few months of acclimation, Randle has settled into a more suitable role as a second option in Minnesota. Always an underrated playmaker (when the mood took him), Randle is slinging passes all over the floor, rewarding the cadre of shooters around him and exploiting the elite vertical spacing that Gobert offers. He is also using that space to pick his spots for his own shot more judiciously. A physical beast with boulders for shoulders, no lesser a defender than Draymond Green had precious little joy in trying to stop Randle this post season.

With defenses rightly focused on Edwards and Mike Conley, Randle’s scoring and playmaking have been imperative to the Wolves' success, as coach Chris Finch acknowledged.

While the sheer length of the Thunder’s Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren present a whole new riddle to solve, Randle’s narrative has been rewritten, a talented player finally in the right role and rightly getting his due.