Minnesota Timberwolves‘ trade for Julius Randle has not benefitted the team this 2024-25 NBA season. The Wolves are 17-15 in the Western Conference, making them the eighth seed. Their performance this season needs to improve and has to come from within.
Before Media Day, they traded away longtime Minnesota star Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks. When they advanced to the Western Conference finals the previous season, they hoped to improve their performance. But they haven’t received the lift they were expecting from the trade.
Former NBA player Chandler Parsons suggested on Thursday’s episode of “Run It Back,” that the Wolves should experiment with moving players in their lineup. According to Parsons, he believes moving Randle to the bench and swapping him with Naz Reid would give Minnesota more options on offense.
“You have an offense that’s struggling,” Parsons said. “You have an offense that is in dire need of shooting when you have Julius Randle and you have Rudy Gobert clogging the paint on the offensive end. Their team is kind of on the rise, they make this trade and now it seems like they’ve taken a step back.”
Anthony Edwards and the rest of the T-Wolves would benefit from Naz Reid replacing Julius Randle in the starting lineup 👀 pic.twitter.com/uJASi4BdUY
— Run It Back (@RunItBackFDTV) January 3, 2025
“Meanwhile, Naz Reid is on the bench, he can stretch the floor, he can play, open up the floor for Anthony Edwards to kind of operate…” he continued. “I think this is an option that they could go to where they could fully give Julius Randle the keys, still play him his 30-35 minutes, still play him at the end of the game, still treat him like the star he is. But just simply implement Naz Reid just to kind of open up that offensive end of the floor more for Anthony Edwards and you’ll see him not settle for more threes a much as you’ll see.”
How has Julius Randle played for the Wolves?
The trade has been a difficult transition for Julius Randle this season. His stats have decreased even though he is still in the starting lineup. Randle has played in 32 games this season, averaging 19.9 points, 6.9 rebounds and 4.4 assists. These are the lowest numbers he’s averaged since his first season with the Knicks in the 2019-20 season.
Julius Randle’s numbers are down not because he’s struggling to make shots since he’s making 47% of his shots from the field. However, he’s not getting enough touches since Anthony Edwards also needs to have the bell to be effective.
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Reign also writes NBA and WNBA news updates on Sportskeeda. He started as a feature writer for AirAlamo, an NBA website that covers the San Antonio Spurs. Some of his work can also be seen with Valley of the Suns, a Phoenix Suns-centric website, where he served as a contributing writer.
