Julius Randle wanted to work. This didn’t surprise Tyler Relph a bit. Relph has been helping Randle train for over a decade, going back to Randle’s days at Prestonwood Christian Academy in Dallas. Even then, at the age of 15, Randle understood the value of sweat equality.
But this was something else. This was different.
When the NBA retired the season in March, Randle flew to his hometown and continued training, assuming it would be a temporary hiatus. He and Relph fell into an old routine: exercise, conditioning, staying sharp for when the call came that the Knicks could play again.
It never happened. There would be a bubble in Orlando and most of the competition would go there, but the Knicks stayed away. Their season was over. And something clicked in the man who averaged 19.5 points and 9.7 rebounds in a largely forgettable season.
“Can’t he play while all those other guys were playing in the league?” Relph says with a laugh. “That made him angry.”
Not long after, Relph received a call on his cell phone. Randle.
“Let’s get to work,” he said.
“Of course,” said Relph. “Just tell me when and where.”
“Stay where you are,” Randle said to him. “We’re moving back to Dallas. We buy a house. I am coming to you. Let’s go.”
Relph chuckles at the memory.
“I’ve known Ju for quite some years,” he said. “He wasn’t kidding.”
He was not. In the past, off-season work usually took place in Los Angeles or New York, where Randle was also housed, a few weeks here, a few weeks there. Sometimes they would go on vacation together and he would invariably get up at six in the morning to hit the gym, then FaceTime his weight trainer and take a 20-mile bike ride through Miami.
“At one point I thought he’d like to chill,” says Relph. ‘But he never did. Not once. This was different. This was every day. “
Some days that meant the two would meet at a gym at 6 a.m., drill footwork, work on Randle’s shot, grind for 90 minutes non-stop. Three or four times a week that was only the second stop on the itinerary, as Randle opened his old gymnasium at 5 a.m. to light jumpers himself, the first bundle of 1200 that he took every day, every week, every month. , for nine months.
Soon, Relph introduced him to a weight trainer named Melvin Sanders, and the two men immediately hit it off.
“Ju likes it when you not only set up his training, but also train with him,” says Relph. That’s Melvin. And that’s me. Thanks to Ju, I’m in better shape now than when I played in college. I have no choice; otherwise I would never keep up. “
Born in Rochester, NY, Relph played for two years in West Virginia and two years in St. Bonaventure and contracted the coaching bug after injuring his knee after graduation, where he interned with Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt. In 2010 he decided to become a personal basketball trainer and moved to Dallas.
There he met Randle, who was already a precocious talent, who would have a great freshman year in Kentucky before joining the Lakers with the seventh pick of the 2014 draft. He played in LA for four years, moved to New Orleans for a very productive 2018/19 season, then signed a three-year $ 63 million deal with the Knicks.
“He’s the hardest worker I’ve ever seen,” says Relph. “By far. You know, it’s not easy to get an average of 20 and 10 and 3 in the NBA. Not just by showing up. But even by that standard, he’s taken it to incredible levels this summer lifted. “
Randle showed up at the gym every day. Sometimes they had three separate workouts, and they didn’t include the weight sessions with Sanders.
“We only had time,” says Relph, “and he didn’t want to waste any of it. We had nine months. So I said to him, ‘Let’s be a star. Let’s try to make you one of the best players in the league. ‘We went back to what we used to do. Footwork, stuff to make sure he got to places quickly. Again and again. Every day.”
Relph stressed the importance of using a dribble, or two, to get a shot when needed; when he saw Randle use that move twice to break away from Giannis Antetokounmpo in the Knicks’ third game of the season, he screamed at television with delight.
Despite all the hard work, the most important moment of the summer was July 30, when word came that the Knicks had hired Tom Thibodeau. Immediately, Relph thought this would be a perfect marriage.
“I knew what this was going to be,” says Relph. ‘I said to him,’ You’re going to play 40 [minutes] every night. If you play hard, Thibs will let you go. We didn’t think he wished he could be a point ahead, but once they spoke and he said it was just perfect. Responds to all of Ju’s strengths.
“It’s been phenomenal because Julius and Thibs have the same mindset. They are workers. Neither of them ever really got anything, they had to earn everything. They are both the first to work every day. They see things in exactly the same way. “
The payout is of course this season, the Knicks start with a surprising 5-3 start, 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 pushing his game to an all-star level has played perfectly so far.
That has excited Knicks fans. And brought joy 1,300 miles west, where his friend and trainer will officially open the Tyler Relph Basketball Lab in downtown Dallas this weekend, where his current clients – RJ Hamton, Willie Cauley-Stein and Skylar Diggins-Smith, among them – will have a house. And where Julius Randle can always go for a nice workout. Although he probably won’t stop at one.