The Los Angeles Lakers kicked off their Thursday exit interviews with Julius Randle. During the interview, he mentioned discussing his room for growth with Luke Walton. With this being a contract year for Randle, he had to prove a lot if he wanted a chance to stay with the team.
Right now, the situation is out of his control and he has to wait for the Lakers to make a decision on whether or not they’ll offer him the kind of contract he’s looking for. This season he shot over 50 percent from the field and averaged 16.1 points per game. He started in 49 of the 82 games he played and it was certainly an improvement over his previous seasons.
With Randle being more efficient on offense, we’re already starting to see his growth. Plus, since he’s only 23 there really is plenty of room to continue growing as a player. One area he could use some improvement in is in spreading the floor with some three-point shooting. He doesn’t shoot from distance often, but if he can add that to his repertoire, it would greatly benefit him and the team.
Randle specifically spoke about the areas in his game that he wants to continue working on, alluding to advice from a former mentor:
Randle: "I have a foundation for how I want to play. Everybody has tendencies. Probably 2/3 years ago, Kobe told me, if you want to be ungaurdable, the trick is for everyone to know what you want to do and you still can’t stop it. I have my foundation and I can build off that."
— Mike Trudell (@LakersReporter) April 12, 2018
Below was Randle’s response to a question about how his go-to moves worked quite well all season, and defenses couldn’t do much, so he didn’t really need to resort to other things (jumper, right hand). He still wants to keep polishing/improving, but knows how he wants to play. https://t.co/bKM7qQ7Qve
— Mike Trudell (@LakersReporter) April 12, 2018
Hopefully, the Lakers choose to keep Randle because the fact that he still has room for growth is an upside. They know what player he’s shaping up to be and since they already traded away some of their younger players, it would be wise to keep him. It just all depends on what that’ll cost them.
