according to ESPN\u2019s Dave McMenamin<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019re not just a defense that bogs you down and stops you from scoring. Their identity is creating points off of turnovers and high pressure, which is different. You don\u2019t really see high-pressure defenses in the NBA.\u201d<\/p>\nThrough the first two rounds of this year\u2019s NBA Playoffs, Randle was excellent. The 6-foot-9 power forward averaged 23.9 points, 5.9 rebounds, and 5.9 assists while shooting 50.9 percent from the field. Minnesota won both series in five games as Randle shook off the narrative of being a playoff struggler. <\/p>\n
But then he \u2014 and the rest of his Minnesota teammates \u2014 ran into the Thunder. <\/p>\n
After scoring at least 16 points in every game through the first two rounds, Randle had two games of six or fewer points against OKC. He turned the ball over four or more times in four of those five games. The shooting numbers didn\u2019t fall off too much, but in Games 2 and 4 \u2014 when he combined for just 11 points in a pair of losses \u2014 there was little he could do to make an impact. <\/p>\n
Why? Because OKC can throw so many different options at you. They get in your face and push you around. No one seems to run out of gas. And when they do, one elite wing defender is replaced with another. Randle was used to being quicker than most defenders early in the postseason, but life proved difficult when 6-foot-6 menaces were immediately double-teaming him on every post-up or drive. <\/p>\n
It reminded Randle of his lone college season at Kentucky, when he faced a similar defense: Rick Pitino\u2019s Louisville Cardinals.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see that (aggressive style of defense) more in college and stuff like that,\u201d Randle added. \u201cI remember being in college and playing Louisville and they used to press and trap and all those different types of things. \u2026 It\u2019s a different kind of team, obviously, than I\u2019ve played in my career.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Randle\u2019s credit, he handled those Louisville defenses much better than he did OKC\u2019s. During the 2013-14 regular season, he went for 17 points on 7-8 shooting in a win against the Cards. A few months later, in the NCAA Tournament\u2019s Sweet 16, his stat line consisted of 15 points and 12 rebounds on 5-11 shooting. That was a pretty talented UL squad, too, finishing 31-6 on the season before losing to the \u2018Cats in that tournament battle. <\/p>\n
Pitino, who now coaches at St. John\u2019s and will face Kentucky in the 2025-26 season, even took to social media to discuss how impressed he\u2019s been with the Thunder defense this postseason. <\/p>\n
On Thursday, shortly after OKC wrapped up the series against Randle and Co., he wrote<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s interesting, in my 40+ years I\u2019ve never shown clips to my teams of NBA defense. Offensive sets and individual moves, but never defense. Until this past season. We watched the Thunder at least 3x a week. Their switching, loading up to help, and rotations are awesome. And they are still so young!!!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oklahoma City Thunder has produced one of the more lethal defenses we\u2019ve seen in modern NBA history.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3783],"tags":[7,1665,6,310,475,179,3966,3965,1284,312],"class_list":{"0":"post-67176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oklahoma-city-thunder","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-julius-randle-13-prestonwood-christian","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-oklahoma","12":"tag-oklahoma-city","13":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","14":"tag-oklahomacity","15":"tag-oklahomacitythunder","16":"tag-rick-pitino","17":"tag-thunder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114599654284967572","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}