Julius Randle is no stranger to the growing pains of a new offensive role, remember?
Julius Randle is in need of a rebrand once again, struggling to find the night-to-night consistency needed to guide the Knicks and their new talent infusion. Could he be better served being a boat than an island?
This season, the Knicks' starting lineup has been a dysfunctional society of offensive islands: separate and distinct from each other, cagey and cautious, isolationist in nature to the tired tune of a predictable my-turn, your-turn two-step. Like he was last year, Julius Randle is the societies' center, but is having trouble adapting to his new neighbors as the expectations of the team and the roster's weaponry shifts. More than this, he’s having to adapt from a style of play that as recently as a few months ago bought him success, and silverware, and the regular season adoration of the entire Knicks fanbase.
Fresh off a career-best season in which he knew exactly where and when he would get his shots, and where his shooters would be spotted up, the Knicks' star-man is having to explore a new stylistic catalogue, on the fly, to accommodate the co-arrivals of Evan Fournier and Kemba Walker. Through 15 games, he's emphatically in his own head, visibly thinking in his minutes, every other night an internal referendum on his role. The last two contests, the good kind against the Indiana Pacers and the bad kind against the Orlando Magic, perfectly encapsulated his early season existential crisis.
The Magic game was a festival pain to watch, with Orlando pretty deservedly coming away with the win, despite another game where the Knicks got a bunch of good looks from the 3-point line that refused to drop. Part of the problem was the other perimeter, as in, of the court. Those sidelines were everywhere, in what was the best performance by a line of paint I've seen in years. By happy contrast, the Indiana game, and Randle's style of play en route to maybe the team's best collective performance of the season, might be instructive of how the Knicks' discombobulated star needs to play moving forward.
The statistically underwhelming but encouragingly dynamic Julius we saw versus the Pacers could be the blueprint for his role trending away from All-Star creator to more of an All-Star connector, away from a static wrecking ball towards more of a second-side shepherd, away from an island hub towards more of a speedboat initiator.
And maybe that’s it. The start of an offensive solution for our struggling starters. A good old fashioned nautical morphing: Julius Randle is better as a boat than an island.
Yes, I know how crazy that sounds. And yes, I’ve been over-googling vacations to Greek islands I can’t afford. But it makes so much more sense on the court than the recent nonsense of Julius' worryingly Grundle-esque early season form.
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