{"id":609830,"date":"2026-04-16T03:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T03:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/609830\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T03:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T03:18:10","slug":"julius-randle-jokes-hell-need-to-ask-god-for-a-few-favors-to-defend-nikola-jokic-in-nba-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/609830\/","title":{"rendered":"Julius Randle Jokes He’ll Need to Ask God for ‘A Few Favors’ to Defend Nikola Jokic in NBA Playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minnesota Timberwolves forward Julius Randle offered a humorous response when discussing his upcoming task of guarding Denver Nuggets star Nikola Joki\u0107 in the first round of the 2026 playoffs.<\/p>\n

“Probably gotta call God and talk to him for a little bit and ask him for a few favors,” Randle joked on Wednesday, per Jon Krawczynski<\/a> of The Athletic. “It’s going to be a tough matchup. He’s an incredible player. … It’s going to be a battle, but we’re prepared. We’re ready for it.”<\/p>\n

Randle spent just over 22 minutes guarding Joki\u0107 during the regular season, the second-most time any player spent defending the three-time MVP (via NBA.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Joki\u0107 fared well in the individual matchup, scoring 43 points and dishing out 16 assists compared to eight turnovers. He also shot 16-of-24 from the field and 3-of-3 from behind the arc when defended by Randle. <\/p>\n

It’s worth noting that few players were able to slow down Joki\u0107 during the regular season, though. <\/p>\n

He recorded 27.7 points per game, while his averages of 12.9 rebounds and 10.7 assists per game both led the league<\/a>. Joki\u0107 connected on 56.9 percent of his field goals and 38.0 percent of his triples. <\/p>\n

Still, the Timberwolves have advanced to the Western Conference Finals in each of the past two seasons and took down the Nuggets during their 2024 run.<\/p>\n

Randle is also coming off a 2025-26 regular season in which he averaged 21.1 points, 6.7 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 1.1 steals per game on 48.1\/31.5\/80.2 shooting splits. <\/p>\n

Game 1 between the Nuggets and Timberwolves is on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minnesota Timberwolves forward Julius Randle offered a humorous response when discussing his upcoming task of guarding Denver Nuggets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-609830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}