Julius Randle certainly acted like a player scorned.
The star forward bolted off the court without acknowledging his former Knicks teammates after they destroyed his Timberwolves, 133-107, on Thursday night in Minneapolis.
Randle claimed beforehand that he was treating it like it was just “another game” and his performance certainly felt ordinary after a scorching start.
Randle had 15 points in the first quarter — including screaming at the Knicks bench after hitting a 3 — as Minnesota took a 33-32 lead before the Knicks dominated the rest of the night.
Randle scored nine points the rest of the game and finished with a negative-13 plus/minus after the Knicks put defensive stalwart OG Anunoby on him.
One particular highlight of him not hustling back on defense after missing a 3-pointer and leading to an easy Mikal Bridges layup made the rounds on social media, as well.
Donte DiVincenzo, the other key player in the trade that brought Karl-Anthony Towns to New York, hugged his former teammates afterwards.
Randle did not talk to reporters after the game to explain his lackluster performance or his disinterest in reuniting with Knicks players.
Anthony Edwards, though, did plenty of explaining as the 14-12 Timberwolves look like a shell of the team that made an impressive run to the Western Conference Finals last season.
The massive offseason trade with the Knicks has seemingly taken them further from taking the next step.
“We don’t have s–t on offense. We don’t have no identity,” Edwards told reporters. “We know I’m gonna shoot a bunch of shots, we know Ju [Randle] gonna shoot a bunch of shots, and that’s all we know. We don’t really know anything else. It’s not on the coaches at all. It’s on us. We’re out there playing.”
Randle spent five seasons in New York and was in the middle of the team’s resurgence from perennial laughingstock to legitimate contender.
However, he was hobbled with an ankle injury during the Knicks’ 2023 playoff run and missed the entire 2024 postseason with a dislocated shoulder.
In those two years, Jalen Brunson became the face of the team and several of his former Villanova friends joined him on the Knicks roster.
