New York Knicks: Is Julius Randle really transformed?

Julius Randle: A completely different player?

Randle undoubtedly made productive use of the extended off-season. He’s talked about his weight and conditioning as well as developing a relationship with Thibs early on, and his career-high FT% suggests he worked on his shot. All of that plays a role in his improvement.

But transformation? The only transformation I see is in everything around him. Better coaching. Better (performing) teammates. Better/clearer role. In essence, he’s the same player, only now he’s being used right.

I mean, what’s more likely?

A) 7-year veteran spent nine months in deep reflection and self-assessment before deciding, “You know what? Now’s the time to finally develop my IQ, learn about that other side of the ball, and become an assist machine,” or,

B) 7-year-veteran always had talent and ability but struggled with new role and increased responsibility in a non-system and just needed the right coaches/roster to pull it out of him.

If your answer is A (or some less sarcastic version of it), you’re lying to yourself, perhaps because A is the only answer that justifies all of last year’s unreasonable criticism and misguided vitriol.

But he still spins into help. He still struggles with length and well-designed double-teams. He still gets frustrated and lets that frustration affect decision-making. He still has possessions where the ball sticks (though perhaps not as many). He’s shooting only slightly less frequently compared to last year. He’s passing just as frequently. He’s turning it over more frequently.

Yes, he’s playing defense, which we’ve all loved to see. Does that mean metamorphosis?

No. It means guy who missed his entire rookie season due to injury, played his second season for a coach that can’t coach defense, played the next two seasons for a new coach who can’t coach defense, left for New Orleans to play for a coach that can’t coach defense, left again for New York and a coach that can’t coach anything, finally has a coach who knows defense.

If you watched 2019-20 New York Knicks objectively, putting aside the negative feelings that come with your favorite team losing two out of every three and your favorite young players struggling mightily, you would’ve seen this. The ability. The potential. You would’ve focused on all the positives in his monster games instead of harping on turnovers and failures to pass to wide-open RJ Barretts.

The same way we’re focusing on mainly positives now.

Maybe that’s what’s going on here. A “winning cures all” sort-of thing. The Knicks were horrible, and Randle was the main man in role and paycheck, so he must’ve been horrible. But now they’re playing good basketball – despite being wildly shorthanded – and he’s doing the heavy lifting, so he must be good. How did he get from horrible to good in such a short time?

The easy explanation is transformation.

The better explanation is he’s been unlocked, that the talents he had when he signed have been maximized by competent leaders. Knicks players themselves have implied as much about the team’s improvement, Randle included. “We don’t have to second-guess where we’re going to be on the floor. We have great spacing and if the defense is collapsing, I can depend on whoever it is to cut or to be in the right (place). And just make the easy play.”

That’s all he’s doing: making the easy play. He didn’t enlist a life coach to help him become more selfless. He didn’t go from JR Smith to Mensa-level basketball IQ. Fact is, it’s easy to make the right play when it’s coached, when structured offense that everyone buys into puts players in positions they’ve seen and drilled before.

That’s where the transformation lies – not in the player, but in everything else. Julius, to his credit, is simply making the most of a better situation.