Julius Randle wanted to start working. That didn’t surprise Tyler Relph a bit. Relph has helped coach Randle for more than a decade, dating back to Randle’s days at Prestonwood Christian Academy in Dallas. Even then, at age 15, Randle understood the value of sweat equity.
But that was something else. That was different.
When the NBA stopped the season in March, Randle flew to his hometown and continued to work, figuring it would be a temporary break. He and Relph fell into an old routine: exercise, conditioning, staying sharp for when the call came that the Knicks could play again.
He never did. There would be a bubble in Orlando and most of the league would go there, but the Knicks were left out. His season was over. And something clicked inside the man who had averaged 19.5 points and 9.7 rebounds in a mostly unforgettable season.
“Can’t he play while all the other guys in the league were playing?” Diu Relph laughs. “That drove him crazy.”
Shortly afterwards, Relph received a call on his cell phone. Randle.
“Let’s get to work,” he said.
“Of course,” Relph said. “Tell me where and when.”
“Stay where you are,” Randle told him. “It simply came to our notice then. We are buying a house. I come to you. Here we go.”
Relph laughs at the memory.
“I’ve known Ju for many years,” he said. “I wasn’t kidding.”
It wasn’t. In the past, off-season work used to happen in Los Angeles or New York, where Randle was quartered, a few weeks here, a few weeks there. Sometimes they would go on vacation together and I would always be awake at 6am to go to the gym, then FaceTime, their weight trainer, and then go out for a 20 mile bike ride through Miami.
“At some point I thought I’d like to catch a cold,” Relph says. “It simply came to our notice then. Not once. That was different. That was every day. “
A few days that meant the two would meet at a gym at 6 a.m., working with their feet, working on Randle’s shot, a 90-minute non-stop routine. Three or four times a week, which was only the second stop on the route, as Randle opened his old high school gym at 5 a.m. to shoot jumpers on his own, the first pack of 1,200 he fired every day, every week, month, for nine months.
Soon after, Relph introduced him to a weight trainer named Melvin Sanders, and the two men hit him instantly.
“Ju likes you to not only set up your workout, but exercise with it,” Relph says. “That’s Melvin.” And it’s me. Thanks to Ju, I am now in better shape than when I played in college. I have no choice; otherwise, I would never keep up. ”
Relph, a native of Rochester, New York, played two years in West Virginia and two years in St. Louis. Bonaventure and caught the coach’s mistake after getting on his knees after graduating, doing an apprenticeship under Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt. In 2010 he decided to become a personal basketball coach and moved to Dallas.
There he met Randle, who was already an early talent, who would have a fantastic freshman year in Kentucky before going to the Lakers with the seventh pick in the 2014 draft. He played in Los Angeles for four years, moved to New Orleans for a very productive 2018-19 season and then signed a three-year deal with $ 63 million with the Knicks.
“He’s the hardest worker I’ve ever seen,” Relph says. “From afar. You know, it’s not easy to average 20, 10 and 3 in the NBA. You don’t just do it by introducing yourself. But even by that standard, this summer took it to an incredible level.”
Every day, Randle showed up at the gym. At times, they had three separate workouts and did not include weight sessions with Sanders.
“We had nothing but time,” says Relph, “and I didn’t want to lose anything. We were nine months old. So I told him, ‘Let’s be stars. Let’s try to be one of the best players in the league.’ “We used to do it. Work with your feet, things to make sure you get to the places quickly. Time and time again. Every day.”
Relph emphasized the importance of using a watering can or two to be able to make a shot whenever you need it; when he saw Randle use this move twice to get rid of Giannis Antetokounmpo in the third game of the Knicks season, he shouted delightedly in front of the television set.
Despite all the hard work, the highlight of the summer came on July 30, when the news came that the Knicks had hired Tom Thibodeau. Immediately, Relph thought it would be a perfect marriage.
“I knew what that would be,” Relph says. “I told him, ‘You’re going to play at 40 [minutes] every night. If you play hard, Thibs will let you go. We didn’t know I wanted it to be a point forward, but once they talked and said it was perfect. Play all of Ju’s strengths.
“It’s been great because Julius and Thibs have the same mentality. They are workers. Neither of them has ever been given anything, they had to win it all. They are both the first boys to work every day. They see things exactly the same way. ”
The reward, of course, is this season, the Knicks start a stunning 5-3, Randle averaging 23.1 points, 12.0 rebounds and 7.4 assists. The All-Star Game has already been canceled, but Randle’s goal of getting his game to a star level, so far, has been played perfectly.
This has thrilled Knicks fans. And he brought joy to 1,300 miles west, where his friend and coach will officially open this weekend the Tyler Relph Basketball Lab in downtown Dallas, where his current clients – RJ Hamton, Willie Cauley-Stein and Skylar Diggins -Smith, among them- to have a home. And where Julius Randle can always go for a good workout. Although it probably won’t stop at just one.