The Timberwolves took a playoff risk. Julius Randle made it pay off.

Julius Randle wasn't known as a strong playoff performer before arriving in Minnesota this season. He's changed that reputation with the Timberwolves.

The 2025 NBA postseason has unmistakably been shaped by trades — deals that landed big man Karl-Anthony Towns in New York, All-Star guard Tyrese Haliburton in Indiana and future league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in Oklahoma City.

Among the four remaining teams, however, no trade was more high-risk, high-reward than the Minnesota Timberwolves' decision in September, coming off one of the most successful seasons in franchise history, to send Towns, a franchise cornerstone, to the Knicks.

In one way, it was a reaction to the NBA’s year-old collective bargaining agreement, which makes it more difficult to keep expensive, deep rosters together for long by taking away top-spending teams’ ability to draft and make trades. Towns was set to begin a four-year contract worth more than $220 million, and the players Minnesota received, reserve guard Donte DiVincenzo and forward Julius Randle, earned less this season combined than Towns.

The financial flexibility in the trade "allows them to remake the team around Anthony Edwards" in the long term, said Chris Hine, the longtime Timberwolves beat writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

But the move was also effectively a belief that Towns' big-man replacement in the deal, Randle, could serve as a reasonable facsimile. It was a gamble: that Randle, a regular-season All-Star whose history of postseason struggles had soured his time in New York, could help push a Timberwolves franchise with its own lack of playoff history over the top and into the team’s first Finals.