Short-lived glory caught up to Julius Randle and in turn, the New York Knicks.
If you zoom out and assess Randle’s 2021-22 campaign from afar, it looks like a mess. It’s unusual to see a player of his caliber take a step back in every stat category on the traditional box score. The trend grows more alarming when you dive into his advanced metrics. From one season to the next, Randle’s true shooting dipped 5.8% and his on/off court differential swung 9.7 points per 100 possessions in the wrong direction.
The most glaring issue was the reigning Most Improved Player’s shot selection. An agile yet sturdy power forward at 6-foot-8 power, Randle’s best skills are his ability to take defenders off the dribble with a face-up game, punish them in the paint and leverage his scoring position to dish passes and generate looks for his teammates. He’s an improved jump shooter who shouldn’t be afraid to take them, but also shouldn’t rely on shooting to influence the competition.
Instead, Randle spent much of the year taking Kobe-Esque jumpers; oftentimes contested or off-balance from deep in the mid-range or the 3-point line. This is not to say that Randle shouldn’t take jumpers—particularly when he has space. However, forcing shots against tight coverage was detrimental to his output and the New York Knicks offense as a whole. The team had plenty of other problems between injuries, playmaking deficiencies and a general lack of creativity on offense, but Randle simply wasn’t the offensive fulcrum the Knicks expected him to be.
The former lottery pick’s defensive regression was another major disappointment. Never quite known for his defense, Randle’s ascendence on this side of the game was a shocking revelation to many. His energy level, physicality and decisive rotations paid dividends for the third-ranked defense in the NBA in the 2020-21 season. A sharp decline in the team’s defensive impact was seen across the board last year and Randle’s play was the perfect embodiment of the trend.
Slashers would drive past Randle with little-to-no resistance. He’d give up on plays frequently, walking back on defense with nonchalance while expecting others to pick up the slack. He didn’t offer the same competitive spirit on the glass either—particularly when New York fell behind in games or gave up big runs.
No one can hold Randle accountable but himself. It remains unclear what exactly went wrong along the way to trigger this drop in production. No matter what is behind him, the truth of Randle’s game is that his true ability rests somewhere between the player he was in 2021 and the player he was in 2022.