Julius Randle and the Los Angeles Lakers were able to hold on and beat the Sacramento Kings, 113-108, Saturday night, but the team once again didn’t do themselves any favors by continuing to miss free throws at a league-worst rate.
The Lakers are the worst free throw shooting team (69.7 percent) in the entire NBA on the season, and they were only marginally better than that (70 percent) against the Kings, who only shot 64.7 percent from the line themselves.
Randle was one of the chief culprits in Los Angeles’ struggles from the charity stripe in Sacramento. He went 0-for-5 from the line, an effort made poorer by the fact that Randle’s five attempts were the second-most of any Lakers player behind Isaiah Thomas, who made all six of his freebies.
After the game, Randle made it clear that such a night wasn’t up to the high standards he sets for himself by going and shooting free throws alone in the Kings’ practice court, according to Tania Ganguli of the L.A. Times:
Julius Randle walked out of the locker room a few minutes ago shoot at a practice court here. He missed all 5 of his free throws today. Postgame, Luke said hopefully he’s in a gym somewhere shooting free throws. We laughed. But that’s actually what Randle was doing!
— Tania Ganguli (@taniaganguli) February 25, 2018
Randle later reaffirmed his thought process and disgust with failing to make a single attempt at the line:
Julius Randle explains why he went to shoot free throws immediately after the game and says jeez a lot. pic.twitter.com/P6VNSEQpUA
— Tania Ganguli (@taniaganguli) February 25, 2018
Randle grew up a Kobe Bryant fan and was teammates with him for two seasons, and this move is straight out of Bryant’s playbook as he memorably did the same thing after a loss to the Miami Heat in 2011.
The current Lakers obviously are playing for much lower stakes than that 2011 Lakers team, but Randle taking this type of mindset of not being satisfied with a subpar output from himself despite his team grabbing a win anyway and of always working on his weaknesses should only pay off for him moving forward.
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