This streaky forward turns into Michael Jordan whenever he plays the Sacramento Kings

For as long as he's been a featured player in this league, Julius Randle has been a streaky scorer. On some nights, he's capable of monster eruptions. But on other nights, he can produce historically ice-cold shooting performances.

Since he joined the New York Knicks in 2020-21 (which is when Randle started handling a higher offensive load), Randle has only posted an above-average true shooting percentage (the best measure of scoring efficiency) in two of the last five years.

However, one that has been consistent over the years is his performance against our Sacramento Kings, and in our season debut against Randle's new team (the Minnesota Timberwolves), Randle continued his reign of terror on Northern California.

Randle the Sacramento Kings Killer

In Thursday's win against the Kings, Randle scored 33 points on an insane 90.1% true shooting. As we alluded to earlier, this wasn't the first time Randle dismantled our team.

In his last seven outings against the Kings, Randle has averaged 27.6 PPG on 62.5% true shooting (per Stathead). His teams are 5-2 in those games. Those marks are a major step up from his overall averages during this time. In 268 games since 2020-21, Randle is averaging 23.3 PPG on 55.8% true shooting.

Why this is good news for the Kings

One main takeaway that I had from the Kings' 117 to 115 loss to the Timberwolves (other than DeRozan's uneven performance) was that we actually played the better game between the two teams.

To me, the Kings (who are no strangers to bad opponent shooting luck) should have won that game if not for Randle's ridiculous tough shot-making run. Just a few days before this game, Randle scored just 16 points on a more pedestrian 5-for-10 shooting from the floor. Had Randle played more similar to that, the Kings would have won easily.

To be fair, part of the reason Randle played so well is because the Kings, as currently constructed, struggle to defend bigger, bulkier forwards (it's part of our lack of size). However, Randle still hit plenty of contested jump shots (he was 11 for 15 on non-rim field goal attempts) that he doesn't normally hit at such a high rate.

Variance wasn't on the Kings' side against the Timberwolves. But if they keep playing like this, when shooting luck is on their side, they will win plenty of games. For now, we just have to hope that Randle doesn't keep this Kings-focused heater going for very much longer.