MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Julius Randle lowered his head to drive into the lane with a determination that was missing in the last game, muscling his 6-foot-9, 255-pound frame against slender Oklahoma City star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander before pulling up and draining a 10-footer.
With Minnesota’s lead at 34 points late in the third quarter, the Target Center crowd was roaring with an intensity sustained from start to finish on Saturday night.
After the Thunder called timeout, Randle strutted to midcourt, raised his arms and shouted repeatedly at the frenzied fans: “We home now!”
The Timberwolves made quite an entrance in the Western Conference finals, even if their 143-101 victory in Game 3 was a late arrival.
Randle’s performance was the epitome of the response.
“The home energy had me going today,” said Randle, who had 24 points on 9-for-15 shooting with four rebounds, three assists — and no turnovers. “It gave me a lot of juice. I just wanted to feed off of that energy. I know our team feeds off of it. I was just having fun out there.”
After averaging 24 points on 52% shooting over the 11 games of these NBA playoffs for Minnesota, Randle disappeared in Game 2 with six points on 2-for-11 shooting with four turnovers. With Oklahoma City in full control, coach Chris Finch kept him on the bench for the entire fourth quarter.
Randle was disappointed by the decision, to be sure, but he’s got too strong of a relationship with Finch — dating to the 2018-19 season with New Orleans when Finch was an assistant — and too much of a grasp of the bigger picture to let any negative emotion cloud his demeanor.
“Obviously as a competitor I want to play, but it’s all about the team and I wanted to make sure that I came in the same if it’s a good day or if it’s a bad day,” Randle said. “I think it’s important for my teammates to see it. As hard as it is at times, you’ve got to check your ego at the door.”
Finch and Randle spoke at the morning shootaround, but there wasn’t any tension to clear.
“I said, ‘Hey, man, you had one subpar game in the playoffs so far. Just happened to be the other night. We’re moving on,'” Finch said.
Good advice from the head coach, of course, but the star player actually beat him to it.
Anthony Edwards, who sparked the Wolves with 30 points in 30 minutes before sitting for the fourth quarter with the game well in hand, was the first one to approach Randle in Oklahoma City on Thursday night with an encouraging word.
“He was like, ‘Bro, just shake that. Like, you good. Don’t worry about it,'” Randle said. “And as the flight went on, I was able to start smiling and laughing again while we’re playing cards and all that stuff. So he’s very mature and very in-tune with the team, and as a leader of the team you need that.”
Randle rediscovered his aggression in Game 3 — and his fadeaway. He knocked down a 16-footer and an 11-footer early, part of a revival of the success the Wolves had in the paint in the first two rounds of the NBA playoffs before slamming into the Thunder’s league-best defense in the first two games of this series.
“We just had to keep finding a better game within ourselves,” Finch said. “We hadn’t really played our best basketball, all credit to them at times, for affecting that. I think we just were able to put it all together, and we’ve got to do it again.”
___
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA