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For Nets’ Julius Randle, coming home goes beyond the Garden
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- For Nets’ Julius Randle, coming home goes beyond the Garden
Julius Randle's oldest son never really stopped being a New York kid.
Even after the family moved to Minnesota, he and his old buddies stayed on FaceTime every day and played video games together. Friends flew out to see him. He made trips back. They found ways to keep being kids together, whatever the distance.
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Now he's back at his old school. The friendships maintained through screens and plane tickets are part of everyday life again. Randle's wife has her circle of friends nearby, and the veteran forward has his own community outside basketball.
Monday brings another visit to Madison Square Garden, this time in a Nets uniform. But the family's homecoming is already well underway.
"For my family, everybody's really, really happy and really excited to be back," Randle said at Media Day.
There have been Garden reunions already. Knicks fans gave him an ovation when he visited with Minnesota in January 2025. Last November, he returned again and scored 32 points in a Minnesota Timberwolves loss.
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This time, though, Randle's doing more than passing through. New York is home again, and another team in the city is asking him to help build something.
For five seasons, Randle helped revive a Knicks franchise that spent seven straight seasons outside the playoffs before breaking through in 2021. Randle left with three All-Star selections and two All-NBA honors from his time in orange and blue. Brooklyn's counting on that experience as it works through a difficult beginning of its own.
At 31, Randle fields questions from younger players about Kobe Bryant, whose example helped shape his early years with the Los Angeles Lakers. The lessons gathered there, and through stops in New Orleans, New York and Minnesota, are now his to pass along.
There's room to keep learning, too. Randle asked for film as soon as he knew he was coming to Brooklyn, intrigued by the different ways head coach Jordi Fernández could use him. Dribble handoffs and passes out of the short roll offer opportunities to make the game easier for his teammates.
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"I feel like it'll be different. I'll be able to create for others in different ways," Randle said.
Sunday provided an example.
With the Indiana Pacers threatening early in the fourth quarter, Randle hit a 3-pointer out of a timeout to push Brooklyn's lead back to six. Later, he assisted on both of Nolan Traoré's late 3s, helping the Nets hold off the short-handed group 98-90 for their first victory after five losses.
Randle finished with 20 points, six assists and four 3-pointers. Fernández singled out his passing while discussing Traoré's second-half surge. The Nets needed his scoring and his ability to help a young teammate deliver.
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One win leaves plenty unresolved for the Nets. Monday's visit to the Garden is the next test. Randle described a sense of stability away from basketball that makes the demands of the job easier to manage.
"And when things are easier off the court, when they're great at home and you're happy and all of those things, it makes the basketball part, the work part that much easier," Randle said.
That comfort reaches well beyond the familiarity of an arena where he played for five years. It's in the people his family stayed close to while they were away, and the everyday life they have resumed here.
"I feel really balanced, really happy, at peace here," Randle said.
