The Fantasy Basketball Encyclopedia

Player Dossier · Brooklyn Nets

Julius Randle

Julius Randle should supply durable points, rebounds and secondary playmaking in Brooklyn, with greater points-league appeal than clean nine-category value.

Snapshot

2026-27 projection

GP MPG FG% FT% 3PM PTS REB AST STL BLK TO
70 31 .472 .780 1.5 19.8 8.5 4.7 0.7 0.3 2.9

Fantasy translation

Role, floor and ceiling

Randle should be Brooklyn's main half-court connector alongside Mikel Brown Jr. and its second power scorer behind Michael Porter Jr.. The fit can restore his rebound rate after playing beside Rudy Gobert, but Day'Ron Sharpe is also an aggressive rebounder. Floor: 17/7/4 with poor category efficiency if Brown and Porter dominate. Ceiling: 22/10/5 and top-60 points value if Brooklyn uses Randle as an offense hub.

Risk monitor

The main risk is fit rather than an active injury: three high-usage starters need the ball, while Randle's value falls quickly when assists or minutes decline. Brooklyn's rebuilding timeline also makes a later trade possible even though the July acquisition was official.

Career record

Pre-NBA: Kentucky, one season (2013-14). 40 games, 30.8 MPG, 15.0 PTS, 10.4 REB, 1.4 AST on .501 FG / .706 FT / .167 3P, with 24 double-doubles on a Wildcats team that reached the national title game. SEC Rookie of the Year, first-team All-SEC, third-team All-American (AP and NABC). He was already the player he is now — a left-handed downhill power forward who created his own shot off the dribble and lived on the offensive glass — and the three-point shot that later defined his prime did not exist yet. Draft: 2014, first round, 7th overall by the Los Angeles Lakers; not traded on draft night.

Season Age Team GP MPG PTS REB AST STL BLK 3PM FG% FT% TO
2014-15 20 LAL 1 14.0 2.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 .333 — 1.0
2015-16 21 LAL 81 28.2 11.3 10.2 1.8 0.7 0.4 0.1 .429 .715 1.8
2016-17 22 LAL 74 28.8 13.2 8.6 3.6 0.7 0.5 0.2 .487 .723 2.3
2017-18 23 LAL 82 26.7 16.1 8.0 2.6 0.5 0.5 0.1 .558 .718 2.6
2018-19 24 NOP 73 30.6 21.4 8.7 3.1 0.7 0.6 0.9 .524 .731 2.8
2019-20 25 NYK 64 32.5 19.5 9.7 3.1 0.8 0.3 1.0 .460 .733 3.0
2020-21 26 NYK 71 37.6 24.1 10.2 6.0 0.9 0.3 2.3 .456 .811 3.4
2021-22 27 NYK 72 35.3 20.1 9.9 5.1 0.7 0.5 1.7 .411 .756 3.4
2022-23 28 NYK 77 35.5 25.1 10.0 4.1 0.6 0.3 2.8 .460 .757 2.8
2023-24 29 NYK 46 35.4 24.0 9.2 5.0 0.5 0.3 1.7 .472 .781 3.5
2024-25 30 MIN 69 32.3 18.7 7.1 4.7 0.7 0.2 1.6 .485 .806 2.8
2025-26 31 MIN 79 33.0 21.1 6.7 5.0 1.1 0.2 1.4 .481 .802 2.7
Career 789 32.1 19.2 8.9 3.9 0.7 0.4 1.2 .472 .759 2.8

Honors along the way: Most Improved Player and All-NBA Second Team in 2020-21, All-NBA Third Team in 2022-23, three All-Star selections (2021, 2023, 2024). The 2014-15 free-throw cell is left blank because ESPN and StatMuse disagree on it and the sample is one game.

Fantasy history: Verified: 2025-26 finished 44th overall in points-league per-game value, PF21 and C15 where he carried center eligibility. FantasyPros I could not verify season-end nine-category per-game ranks from Basketball Monster, Hashtag or the ESPN Player Rater for any season, so no 9-cat finishes are stated. The shape is stable enough to read off the table without them: the Knicks peak years (2020-21 through 2023-24) were high-end scoring, rebounding and assist production dragged toward the middle by 3.4-3.5 turnovers and near-zero stocks, which is exactly the profile that rates a tier better in points leagues than in categories. That gap is the durable fact about him — points formats pay for his volume and ignore the turnovers, categories do the opposite.

Durability: 1, 81, 74, 82, 73, 64, 71, 72, 77, 46, 69, 79 games. Two genuine lost seasons and one soft one. 2014-15 was a broken right tibia on opening night, October 28, 2014, with surgery the next day and no return. 2023-24 was a dislocated right shoulder suffered January 27, 2024 against Miami; he tried to rehab it, could not, and had season-ending surgery in early April. 2024-25 cost him roughly 13 games to a right adductor strain suffered at Utah in January 2025. 2019-20 (64 of 66) and 2020-21 (71 of 72) were near-full seasons in shortened calendars, not injury years. 2025-26 was his healthiest in nearly a decade — 79 games, with a right hand problem costing him only Minnesota's final three regular-season games. Nothing in the history is chronic or recurring; the two big absences were a fracture and a traumatic dislocation, both fully resolved.

Trajectory: Randle has had two distinct careers. The first peaked in New York from 2020-21 to 2023-24 as a 24-25 point primary creator taking 2-3 threes a night, and it ended when the shoulder went. The second, in Minnesota, is a lower-usage version: rebounds collapsed from 10.0 per game to 6.7 (about 10.1 to 7.3 per 36) almost entirely because Rudy Gobert absorbs the defensive glass, while assists per 36 rose to 5.5, near his 2020-21 career mark. The 2025-26 season is the one to build the projection on — 79 games, a career-high 1.1 steals, .481/.802 splits, and 21.1 points on the lowest usage of his prime — which reads as a player who has traded volume for efficiency and health rather than one who is declining. He turns 32 in November, so this is the front edge of the decline curve, but the specific skills carrying him now (post creation, elbow passing, free-throw volume) age better than the pull-up threes he leaned on in New York. In Brooklyn the rebound number should rebound with Gobert gone, and the realistic bet is more boards and fewer assists than 2025-26 rather than an across-the-board step up.

Career sources: ESPN career stats · StatMuse per-game by season · Wikipedia — Kentucky, draft, injuries · NBA.com — 2023-24 shoulder surgery · NBA.com — 2024-25 adductor strain · FantasyPros — points-league finish

Open questions