Lakers News: Julius Randle says he’s confident in his right hand

From the moment he came into the league as a burly-but-mobile power forward, the main criticisms of Julius Randle’s game have been twofold.

The first centers on his sometimes questionable jumper, an area in which he made strides this season. The other (often overblown) critique of Randle has been his lack of an off-arm.

This is in large part due to Randle being left-handed, and as is custom for all left-handers in the NBA, his right hand must be criticized for not being as good. Never mind that many right handers don’t exactly boast world-beating finishing ability with their left.

Still, Randle seemed to make slightly more of an effort to embrace his off-hand this season, and after the Los Angeles Lakers loss to the Golden State Warriors in the final game of their season, he told the media he felt as though his right hand is starting to get to a good place:

Randle is right. The biggest reason he has to get competent with his right hand is so that defenses can’t always play him for his left. He seemed to make decent progress in that area over the course of the season, and will probably continue to grow over the summer.

He sounds like he thinks the rest of the team can make similar strides if they iron out the kinks in their game:

Both Randle and the rest of the Lakers could both do well with a bit more consistency, and now they’ll both have an entire offseason to work on building it.

All stats per NBA.com. and Basketball-Reference.com. Harrison Faigen is co-host of the Locked on Lakers podcast (subscribe here, or listen to our takeaways from the season below), and you can follow him on Twitter at @hmfaigen.