Julius Randle lays out his Nets mission after seeing Knicks finish what he helped start

Julius Randle spent a half-decade lifting the Knicks from cellar-dwellers to contenders, only to get traded away before they finally earned a championship. Now he’s back in the city, across town in Brooklyn, happy to have seen his old teammates become winners while trying to help his new ones on the Nets do the same. “I’m happy [for the Knicks], man,” said Randle, one of the first Nets to utter that phrase.“I kept in touch with guys.

I’ve had a lot of great moments here in the city.I spent five years here, my family has grown here; so I was extremely excited, happy for those guys.

A lot went into that; it’s not just myself, years before me. “So, just happy for those guys.I was just last month on a trip with OG [Anunoby] in Brazil, just kicking it, talking with each other.

So it was a great thing, not just for them, for the organization, [but] for the city that has craved that — we know how New York is — so has craved that winning formula, winning environment.And we plan to do the same thing here.” As a soon-to-be 32-year-old — one who’ll be linked in trade rumors, since he can opt into unrestricted free agency next summer — Randle might not be around long enough for that.

But almost anything is possible.The Knicks proved that. Randle arrived in the Garden in 2019, joining a Knicks team that was a league-worst 17-65 and had gone six seasons without the playoffs.

Two years later, Randle made his first All-Star game, and he had them back in the postseason. But two years ago this month, Randle was traded to Minnesota in a three-team deal that brought Karl-Anthony Towns to the Garden. Randle wasn’t around to see the Knicks close the deal this June.And the end of his tenure with the Timberwolves was bittersweet … and desultory. After averaging 12.8 points and .342 shooting in Minnesota’s second-round defeat — finishing with three points on 1-for-8 shooting in Game 6, and blowing off his exit interview — Randle came under...