On an Easter weekend that provided hope as scripted, Julius Randle especially reminded us that our faith once waned.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
April 21, 2025 at 12:00AM
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The greatest sports wordsmith of all time, Red Smith, referred often to an upbringing in the Holy Roman Church with his Irish mother, Ida. My mother was a McDonough, Jane Cecilia, and she died young, but not before introducing her children to the churchly requirements of the Easter season.
Now at this advanced age, my knees are terrible, probably thanks to a lack of care and exercise, but I would contend also in part because of all those Lenten hours accumulated on the kneelers at St. Gabriel’s in Fulda, Minn., before they were padded.
Through time, there has been significant slippage in my action on Lenten duties — for instance, I now would draw a blank on the Stations of the Cross, which would have given Sister Marna another reason to throw me out of the altar boy crew in Fulda — but what remains from my youth is this belief:
Easter weekend starts with guilt on Good Friday and turns to glorious hope by Sunday.
As a fan base, Wolves followers weren’t exactly guilt-filled on their team’s prospects entering the series, but you did hear this:
As inconsistent as was their performance this season, with all those clunkers, could they really be counted on to hang tough for 48 minutes repeatedly against a team led by LeBron James, still incredible at 40, and Luka Doncic, the scoring machine who did them in over five games in the Western Conference finals last spring?
The guilt angle fell over me as the Wolves were taking charge in the second quarter with a 38-20 beatdown of the Lakers.
During his minutes, I was watching Julius Randle battle fiercely, including on defense, and move the ball — and it took me back to an evening during the early weeks of the season and a close game at Target Center.
Randle would take down a rebound and then dribble up the court, finally planting himself somewhere in the offensive zone, and then hold the ball, wave it around like a crazed mime, to the point all decorum in the press area was lost and I was loudly muttering:
Yes, this happened more than once, and included taking the Lord’s name in vain, which should never be done in a press setting.
There was night after night watching Randle with his new teammates, and I finally decided there was an answer to the question: “How long will it take for Randle to fit in with this team?”
And there was also Jaden McDaniels, all 6-10 of those athletic talents, hanging out in a far corner, throwing an occasional brick from there, collecting seven or eight points, four rebounds and $26 million per season for five years.
With Rudy Gobert clogging up the middle for 32 minutes a night, making it seem impossible for McDaniels to use that area, this was another giant question:
How are the Wolves possibly going to unlock what this 24-year-old ultra-talent has to offer?
In late January, Randle had an outstanding game in a 121-113 win at Phoenix in which he added six assists to 28 points. The next night, he was injured early in a Wolves blowout at Utah. He missed all of February (the Wolves went 5-8) with a groin injury.
KAT who? This guy Julius was a player, a fierce competitor, a clog turned into a cog in the offense.
Gobert also was out for half of February and the first week of March because of a lower-back injury. McDaniels had been unleashing himself, and now he had complete freedom. And when Rudy returned and the schedule wound down, there arrived a commitment to get Rudy the shot at which he is most effective:
Forgot those 4-foot floaters, Rudy. That’s out of your range. Catch it, dunk it, terrific.
It won’t be that easy again, because they won’t go 21-for-42 on threes, for this reason: The Lakers are going to get off their lazy derrieres and guard ‘em.
Except for Doncic. What a load he is to carry around for other defenders. His best move on that end is the “get-em” point.
And it’s now midafternoon on Easter Sunday, this day of hope, and it’s a relief to have cleared my conscience of the repeated blasphemy aimed at Julius Randle a few months back.
