The national media is simply badminton’ing back to you information you already had. … and I’ll repeat here for the record, an example: Julius Randle might end up being a Dallas target, but I’m told the Mavs are aiming “much higher” than that.
Julius Randle Rumors
All NBA Players
Position: F
Born: 11/29/94
Height: 6-9 / 2.06
Weight:250 lbs. / 113.4 kg.
Salary: $4,149,242
Born: 11/29/94
Height: 6-9 / 2.06
Weight:250 lbs. / 113.4 kg.
Salary: $4,149,242
Julius Randle on his impending restricted free agency: “I try to separate emotions from business. I know sometimes they go hand in hand, you spend four years in a place, it kind of goes hand in hand. But honestly, I’m just so focused on my craft and continuing to get better as a player. It’s an exciting time to be a [restricted] free agent, it’s an exciting time. Even more exciting for me is the ability to get better and build off this year. So I mean it might be an emotional time, I don’t know, I’ve never been through this process before but I’ll try to separate [business and emotion] and really just try and enjoy the process and things and educate myself. My team, my agent, everybody has done a great job of educating me on the whole thing and I feel prepared.”
Julius Randle on what he values as far as culture when he considers teams in free agency: “I just feel like culture is important. I feel like having an identity as a team of who you wanna be is really important. You look at the teams who are in the conference finals right now: Boston has an identity and a culture, Houston, Cleveland Golden State, those teams have a culture that makes them successful. I think a reason we had success was because we bought into the way we wanted to play every night with the Lakers. So I feel like identity, culture and direction are really important, and I feel like if you get all the players to buy into that, then everybody has success. Because then you know what you’re working for and how you fit into that.”
Julius Randle on the Lakers not negotiating an extension with him last summer in favor of holding onto their cap space: “I feel like I really had no choice but to separate it [his feelings from the business side of basketball]. I think the extension [had] to be done the day before the season, but I really didn’t have a choice. I had to focus on what I could control. I couldn’t control not getting that extension or whatever happened throughout the year with coming off the bench. I could just control what I could control. That’s just like my preparation, the work that I put in, my focus, my attention, my energy, you know, all those things I could control. I knew that I put in the work, so it was only a matter of time before everything would line up and I just feel like I’m in a better position anyway this summer than if I had worked out an extension last summer. So I guess it’s just funny how life works.”
Julius Randle on the locker-room dynamic in Los Angeles with the team prioritizing cap space over keeping the team together, and whether not it was weird: “Not weird, I thought it was, I felt like everybody thought it was funny, like it was jokes. Like constantly, nobody ever took any report or anything that was coming out being said seriously. We weren’t focused on it, because I think a part of being a player is you realize really quickly that you only have so much you can control. So you can’t control being in trade talks, you can’t control contract negotiations, you can only control that with your play. And everybody just bought into each other, tried to build something and win games.”
Mavs to pursue DeMarcus Cousins, DeAndre Jordan and Julius Randle?
Ever since word spread in league circles in March that Dirk Nowitzki would return to the Mavericks for his 21st season, there have also been rumblings that the Dallas front office will look to make additions this summer that can put the team back on a winning track. The Mavericks can create space to sign a max free agent, and multiple league sources expect them to pursue a trio of big men: DeAndre Jordan, DeMarcus Cousins, and restricted free agent Julius Randle. If the Mavericks do indeed plan to pursue expensive bigs in free agency, then it’d make sense to target a primary scorer, like Porter, rather than Bamba.
