New York Knicks starting power forward Julius Randle is currently in the process of ramping back up from a shoulder injury he sustained earlier in the campaign. Randle played a key role for a Knicks squad that at one point in January was dominating the Eastern Conference, but his injury, combined with absences to OG Anunoby and Mitchell Robinson, now have New York fighting to avoid the dreaded Play-In spot in the upcoming postseason.
Of course, Randle began his career when he was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers back in 2014, who at that time still employed the late Kobe Bryant.
Recently, Randle stopped by the Roommates Show podcast, presented by Playmaker, with his Knicks teammates Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart, to discuss some of the rigorous training methods that he partook in with the late Lakers legend.
“I've been in a workout with this dude at 5:00 in the morning, and we doing defense straight for two hours, and I've never done a workout like that. I'm not talking about like practice or whatever, like an individual workout bro, like you come in the gym work on your game, it's like no we doing some defensive slides bro at 5 in the morning and conditioning,” said Randle. “I'm like bro what the hell is this. Bro it’s crazy. And he's like no bro you can't slide your feet like that. Like you got to do it like this, like even in that he's like super detail and I'm like man like oh this is a level of like, he was just basically obsessed. Like he dedicated his life to the craft and for me growing up watching him idolizing him, it was like super inspiring like even still to this day like I get chills talking about it.”
Kobe Bryant became known, among other things, for his legendary work ethic during his tenure with the Lakers, some of which evidently rubbed off on the future Knicks forward.
A big postseason lies ahead for Julius Randle
Assuming he is able to return to the court in time, a lot of pressure will be on Randle's shoulders when the NBA playoffs get underway in April. Although regular season success has not been an issue during his tenure with the Knicks, the postseason has been a different story, as Randle has suffered through two of the worst statistical playoff performances in recent NBA history during his time with New York, first vs the Atlanta Hawks in 2021, and then vs the Miami Heat in the 2023 postseason.
The way things are set up now, New York is potentially looking at a first round series with the Orlando Magic, a team who beat them three out of four times this regular season and who possess the sort of lengthy wing defenders that have given Randle issues in the past. However, it should be noted that this New York team has more depth than either of those two past iterations, depth that could potentially help ease some of the pressure off of the power forward in those high leverage moments.
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