After the Timberwolves lost Thursday’s encounter against OKC, many blamed Julius Randle for the disappointing outcome. He played arguably his worst game of these playoffs, finishing with just 6 points on 2 of 11 shooting. His struggles were so glaring that Chris Finch benched him for the entire fourth quarter. So, when Randle stepped on the floor for tonight’s Thunder clash, he had only one goal in mind — to dominate!

Proving why he is a three-time All-Star, the forward went off in Game 3, scoring 24 points in just thirty minutes. Thanks to his impressive performance and his team’s collective effort, the Wolves won their first game of this series, that too by a 42-point margin. Following the much-needed win, Anthony Edwards made Julius’ intentions clear, heading into tonight’s game, “He’s a vet man. A vet knows what to do. He knows how to respond. He knows not to take nothing too personal. That’s what he did, man. He came in with the right energy in shootaround this morning. I could see it in his eyes, man. He wanted his respect back, and he got it.”

When Finch benched Randle in Game 2, many feared it would shatter his confidence. “The coach overreacted. And the one thing you don’t want to do, you’re going home in a must-win situation. Now, what Draymond said was important: ‘You can’t take his confidence in a must-win game.’ Your job as a coach is to instill confidence, not take confidence,” Charles Barkley said on Inside the NBA following Thursday’s game.

However, Randle’s performance tonight proves that he is too strong-minded to be affected by one bad game. Sure enough, even Finch had high praise for him following his bounce-back performance.

Chris Finch “proud” of Julius Randle after his epic response in Game 3 against OKC

As Ant-Man claimed, Julius earned his respect back with his redemption game. Of course, returning to Minnesota and playing on his home court, in front of thousands of his fans, also helped. After catching fire during the blowout win, JR was seen mouthing “we home now,” as he hyped up the crowd in Target Center.

With his scoring outburst, he also won back his head coach’s trust. “Yeah, I mean, Julius was awesome. He and I chatted this morning, and we were like ‘Hey man, you’ve had one sub-par game in the playoffs so far.’… I was extremely proud of his response today.” Yes, apart from Thursday’s single-digit performance, Randle has been in elite form throughout these playoffs. He has averaged 22.8 points and over five assists in his thirteen appearances.

So, Finch was happy to see the forward finally back in form, “He got back to doing exactly what we needed him to do, which is to score and play make. Only had three assists, but he did a really good job of setting up a lot of things out there.” Now, Wolves fans would hope that Randle continues this form for the rest of the series, as they still need to win three more games to finish their comeback and advance to the NBA Finals. Do you think they can do it?