MINNEAPOLIS — The stat sheet from the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Game 4 win over the San Antonio Spurs caused a double take and a check of the reading glasses to make sure there were no smudges.
According to the plus/minus category, the most impactful player on either team was … Julius Randle?
Yep, Randle’s plus-12 rating was the highest of any player on both teams, thus providing further evidence to those who believe the plus/minus statistic is often misleading and occasionally nonsense.
In a make-or-break game, Randle finished fourth on his team in scoring and third in rebounding with a game-high six turnovers.
Forget plus/minus. Randle needs to play exponentially better for the Wolves to win the best-of-seven series with the ledger now tied 2-2.
“Solid. Battled,” Randle said when asked to evaluate his performance. “Just doing whatever the team needs for us to win.”
His fourth quarter salvaged an otherwise clunky performance in the 114-109 victory. Randle made a series of winning plays as the Wolves clawed back from an eight-point deficit.
Randle helped ignite the comeback by forcing a key turnover with physical man-to-man defense. He kept a possession alive with an offensive rebound that resulted in a layup by Anthony Edwards. He set up Rudy Gobert on an uncontested dunk.
Those are the kind of plays the Wolves expect from Randle. Those moments, though, have been offset by too much sloppy ball handling and poor shooting.
Randle has committed 18 turnovers in four games compared with only seven assists. His turnovers tend to come in bunches, one bad pass leading to another.
“Probably just trying to play too fast,” coach Chris Finch said. “Maybe playing in a crowd a little bit too much. They swarm you so fast, you’ve got to [move the ball] quick.”
The Spurs’ young wing players are fast, athletic and aggressive. Randle appears sped up in trying to decipher where to go and what to do. His body language looks exasperated after fumbling away a turnover.
“I’m not sure,” he said when asked about necessary adjustments to minimize turnovers. “I’ve got to look at the film.”
The film will show a veteran player not making the impact that is required of the purported second-best player and sidekick to Edwards.
Randle is averaging 14.3 points per game in the series, well below his season average of 21.1. He has scored only 12 points in each of the past three games.
He is shooting 37% overall and 27% from beyond the 3-point arc in the series, both numbers also a notable dip from the regular season.
Randle is at his best when he uses his size and strength to draw a crowd and then finds open teammates as a facilitator, but even that’s not happening. He has only seven assists in the series, none in Game 3. Finch defended Randle on that before Game 4, calling it a “little unfair.”
“He went to the paint 15 times in penetration [in Game 3] and kicked out 15 times,” he said. “We didn’t score a single point from any of those kickouts. That’s not on him. That’s on us. We’ve got to make some shots.”
While true, few would disagree that Randle’s turnovers and overall performance on offense have been problematic. He needs a monster performance to take some pressure off Edwards and remind everyone why the Wolves brought him to Minnesota.
Team architect Tim Connelly envisioned Randle as a versatile playmaker paired with Edwards in executing a blockbuster trade that sent Karl-Anthony Towns to New York in 2024. The Wolves returned to the Western Conference finals with that new configuration last season as Randle elevated his contributions in the first two playoff series.
If the Wolves fall short in this series and the Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder meet in the conference finals, one wonders whether Connelly will see a pair of young, deep, athletic teams ahead of the Wolves and decide to abort this plan and try something radically different again this offseason.
Wolves players and coaches can’t obsess about overarching organizational questions right now. Their focus should be on Game 5 and finding a way to win two more games in this series.
Sharper performances from Randle would improve their chances immensely. He described his play in Game 4 as solid. The Wolves need him to be spectacular at some point.