Julius Randle came into last season as a rookie who Los Angeles Lakers fans saw as a positive step forward to the rebuild of a once historic franchise. Instead, Randle was added to the laundry list of rookies in the class of 2014 to miss a good chunk of their first NBA season. He joined a who’s-who of young stars in Joel Embiid, Aaron Gordon, Jabari Parker, Doug McDermott and now fellow 2014 rookie Dante Exum will presumably miss the entire 2015-16 season.
While Randle has made his way back to the court, has been training with Metta World Peace and has forced Lakers lead trainer Gary Vitti to be extra cautious, its Randle’s off-court demeanor that should have Lakers fans very excited.
His skill set is rare in today’s NBA. He’s a back-to-the-basket big who gets his points inside, fighting for position and scrapping with the often taller trees in the paint. He has a decent mid range jumper and he can bang inside to get rebounds but you won’t be seeing him pulling a Draymond Green or Serge Ibaka and stepping outside for a three. He’s going to try and punish you inside.
So with such a rare ability in today’s league and extra time given to him to recover and be in top shape for the upcoming season, Randle thinking he can average a double-double next season isn’t too far-fetched, is it?
Following from Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News.
“That’s when I really lost it,” said Los Angeles Lakers head athletic trainer Gary Vitti, who has overseen the Lakers miss a combined 827 games because of injuries the past three seasons. […] “I felt that it was my fault. Everyone has told me it wasn’t my fault. But I have carried that for a while.”
Vitti ranked Randle’s injury as his second-most devastating experience entering his 32nd and final season with the Lakers, the incident paling only to when Magic Johnson announced in 1991 he had tested positive for HIV. […] “It wasn’t GV’s fault at all,” said Randle, who also absolved blame on the rest of the Lakers’ trainers. “He wished he could have done more. But there’s nothing else he could have done … I felt bad. I wondered if there’s something else I could have done to warn him. But it was nobody’s fault.”
Randle does not face any workload restrictions when training camp starts Sept. 29 in Hawaii. Yet, the Lakers plan to proceed with caution if any setbacks emerge. […] Lakers coach Byron Scott may also favor starting veteran Brandon Bass at power forward. Though Randle “absolutely” sees himself averaging a double-double, Randle maintained, “I’m just going to do what’s best for the team and whatever I can do to help the team win.”
There were 10 players last season in the NBA to average a double-double in points and rebounds. DeAndre Jordan, Andre Drummond, DeMarcus Cousins, Pau Gasol, Tyson Chandler, Nikola Vucevic, Zach Randolph, Anthony Davis, LaMarcus Aldridge and Greg Monroe all averaged a double-double last season and that list is a full of big names. For Randle to be able to average those numbers it would mean that he would have to play at a new all-star level. Can he do it? I think he can but only time will tell. Time is something that the young star has a lot of going forward.
