From PAYING for a Tryout to G-LEAGUE STAR! | Interview w/ Craig Randall

Randall in the corner, got it! Would you expect anything less from Craig Randall at this point? Randall steps back near the now arena logo. Randall steps in for a deep three with five tenths of a second left! Craig Randall! Welcome back to another episode of the Strictly B-Ball podcast. I'm Joe alongside my co-host Nolan. Today we have a very special guest, the most improved player of the NBA G-League, Craig Randall. Craig, appreciate you hopping out with us today. Sup, thanks for having me. Yeah, so I guess I just want to get a little bit of backstory on you, you know. What was it like growing up in Ohio and how did you first get into basketball, all that stuff? It was cool. I'm from Youngstown, Ohio, so it's a rough area. But I mean, I kind of used basketball to get out. My family is known for basketball just in the city. And so the ball was kind of in my hands once I was born. We kind of looked upon as, if you come out of my family, you don't play basketball, it'd be kind of weird. So I kind of just always grew up with the ball. I never did anything else, never played any other sport. So the ball has just always been in my hands. Gotcha. So you touched on the family. Who else, who else played in your family? Brothers, parents all played basketball? My mom was D1. She went to Kent State University. My dad went to Westminster. Could have went pro, but chose the family route. Got a good job. My oldest brother played in college. Ended up running a basketball program in China for a few years. And then my brother that trains me, Kyle, he played professionally for six or seven years, played in Serbia for one year, and then he played in the D League and the G League. So everybody just hoopers around me. That's cool. Very, very talented family. Just out of curiosity, being from Ohio, did you, were you like a big LeBron fan growing up or are you a big LeBron fan now? No, I, uh, I'm a very big Kobe fan. So it's kind of weird, but I ended up playing for LeBron's high school coach in college for a year at Duquesne. So, I mean, I became a fan of, I'm a fan of LeBron now just because he's one of the best to ever do it. Probably going to go down as the greatest to ever do it. So I just, it's kind of hard not to be a LeBron fan now, but back then you kind of just don't want to be on the bandwagon. But I mean. Does it ever like sit with you? Like, oh wow, like this is super cool. I'm playing for, you know, the coach that coached LeBron. Or is that just something you don't even think about? Or did he have any other good stories about LeBron? A lot of stories. We heard about LeBron every day. It wasn't the time where he didn't bring him up. But I mean, you kind of, you kind of can't be like in that moment of like, oh, he coached LeBron because if he wanted to, he could call LeBron. Uh, he talked to LeBron a bunch of times. LeBron sponsored the school. So like they were Adidas. And then when he took the job, we went Nike. So like we got like LeBron issued shoes, like PE. So like it was just good overall to be a part of it just because it's connections. But I mean, you kind of can't be like culture shocked about it. Yeah, for sure. I feel like, I don't know. I feel like that's definitely something that could be flexed about. Like, oh, I have like a tie to LeBron. It's something really cool. So yeah, definitely. It is a flex for sure. Oh yeah, 100%. So during high school, you played your senior year at Shadow Mountain getting coached by Mike Bibby. And you know, a lot of people remember those Shadow Mountain teams for, you know, playing with incredible heart and intensity on defense. So what was it like playing on that team? And how much did that help you as a player on that team? It was fun. It's a winning environment at all times. And because he played in the league and because he just knows how to get there and how to be a pro, the things you learn, you pick up on things fast. And he didn't accept anything but, like, not perfection, but we were going to do stuff right. We're going to play hard. He didn't really care about nothing. As long as we play hard and did what he asked, like, you can pretty much do whatever you want. As you see those teams, like, we just won games because we played defense. My year, actually, we didn't win state. We lost in the Final Four, which was one of the only years that happened. But the teams after me and the team before me, like, unstoppable teams, kind of just and you want to play hard for him because he's him. You know what I'm saying? To play for Mike Bibby, he went to Shadow Mountain Hall of Fame. Just to say you've been around him is just great. Yeah, I would imagine that culture was pretty cool to be a part of. I guess let's fast forward to, you know, the end of your college career. You were averaging 13 or 16 points a game for UT Martin as a senior. And then COVID hits, right? Making it pretty hard to land with the team overseas. In regards to your basketball career aspirations at that time, a pretty tough time. Where was your head at? And, you know, how did you deal with kind of, like, maybe getting some doubt from other people? I kind of just put my head down. I kind of disappeared from the basketball world in a sense. I just got in the gym with my brother. He put a plan together for me. And we kind of stuck to it. His biggest thing was, when it's time for you to execute, we're just going to execute the plan. And so when it was finally time, I was okay with people not knowing where I was. People wondering. Because I knew what I was doing. I knew the work was being put in. So when it was finally my time, I delivered on my promise to him, which was to execute. And I just, I bet on myself. A lot of people did give up on me. A lot of people did write me off. But I bet on myself and I trusted the work, trusted God. And it turned out good for me. So looking at your success now, I mean, your story is just absolutely incredible. You were the leading scorer in the G League this past season as a rookie. But I kind of want to hear the whole story of how you got on a team and having to pay to go to the G League tryouts. Yeah, I did three local tryouts. I actually did some Euro camps, too, before I even did the local tryouts. So I did three Euro camps. Those went well. They rank you from out of the top players. I was always ranked in the top two each time. And then I went to three local tryouts. I went to one with the Memphis Hustle, the Grizzlies Associate Team, the Lakeland Magic, and then with Long Island. So I mean, I played well all three. But I guess at Long Island, I just stood out just because I played the hardest. Most people go in those tryouts and they try to just show they can score the ball. I was just in there just having fun for just being me, guarding, making shots. Paid for all three of them, the flights. Because I was coming from Washington State, too. So I'm coming across the country for all three of them. So those flights were expensive, plus the money for the tryouts. In the end, it was worth it. I mean, I got my money back, obviously, because I played in June this year. So it doesn't matter. But I mean, yeah, it was definitely a challenge just to keep your mindset right. You kind of got to put your ego to the side and your pride to the side just for these type of events, because you know you're good enough to play, but nobody else knows that. So you kind of just got to go in there with that mentality that nobody knows you again. So I mean, I just put all that to the side. And just like I said, I bet on myself and it turned out very, very good for me. Yeah, I mean, that's an incredible story. And I mean, it's just kind of clear that you have the work ethic. I mean, you went from averaging 13 a game in the Ohio Valley Conference, and then you put your head down, you work, and then you end up averaging, what, 27 points a game, leading the G League in scoring in just a couple of seasons. How did that happen? All work. I worked out twice a day. At one point, I was going at 5 a.m. for like a month straight. It didn't stop. Even when COVID hit, I started working out outside. My brother, we would work out outside. We were just working on finishing up. Like, no jumpers, just staying in shape, working out outside. And I mean, you kind of just got to forget everything else. And that's kind of what I did. Like, I could have just gave up. It's always tough, like, when you mentally, just because you're used to hooping and then you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know when your time's coming. So you kind of like, I was working and never knowing, you know what I'm saying? So you're in that space. So, but for me, like, I always knew my end goal and I knew what I wanted. So at some point in time, it was going to pay off. I didn't know when, but I mean, it finally, it's starting to pay off. I mean, I'm still not done yet. I still got the same hungriness I had two years ago. I'm still itching to still play. So I'm just excited for what's coming in the future. Was it in that time when you were just working out with your brother and not knowing when the opportunity was going to come? Was it ever hard to, to keep that motivation going? No, I think the, it was hard sometimes because it was just like days. It was like dragging, like days just felt so long, but the, the people writing me off and the, my brother was calling agents. I mean, calling teams and they just didn't want to take the chance on me. Didn't want to give an opportunity. And we kind of just used it because we knew that like, I was going to make them pay at some point and we knew that it was going to come to a day where they were going to call and they were going to want to be like, okay, you were right. So, I mean, we're kind of at that point now, but I mean, I had a lot of motivation. I got a lot of people like in my city looking up to me just from where I'm from. So that, that played a big part too. That's amazing. Yeah, that's a, that's definitely a great mindset to have. So is there something about your style of play in the G-League that has opened things up for you as a scorer? The G-League is just like, it's a, it's a fast paced, just a league period, just professional, but it's like, it's fast paced. And in the G-League, like I was put in a good position by my coach. I had the ball in my hands, majority of the game. And so for me, it was just take what I saw was best for me. Like take the shots I took. It's kind of hard to explain because in the beginning of the season, I wasn't, I wasn't, I was shooting 23% from three. I wasn't scoring a lot. And then I came back from Christmas break and I, I worked out with my brother before I came and I told him, I was like, I don't know if I just need to relax and just reset. I was pressing a lot just because I hadn't played in so long. So my role was different, everything. I was just out there guarding the best player every night. And then it turned to that to, I started playing 40 minutes a game. And it just, something just clicked. I kind of got, I had one game, the first game I scored 40. And after that, I just got, my confidence never, never went down. I just realized that like, I can do this all the time. It's just going to take like, just be cool and be calm and be you. I think that's what I got back to doing. Remembering who I was. I've been scoring a ball like this my whole life. That's one thing everybody knows about me is I put the ball in a basket. So I think I got back to that and I just, I'm just comfortable with it now. Yeah. That's, you mentioned dropping 40 and I think you had back-to-back 40 point games. And we saw here, you were the first player in Long Island Nets history to record consecutive 40 point games. So what, what goes through your mind in a game when you're just absolutely on fire? I was blacked out. I wasn't even phased by anything for real. I was just in the moment. I didn't even know the first game I had 40 until the end of the game. And I was talking to the, doing the interview, the post-game interview. And they told me I had 40. So for me, like, cause I don't, I usually don't look up at the scoreboard like to, in our arena, we didn't have like the players numbers with their points. It's just a score. So like, that's all I can see. And so I was trying to win. We had a bad record the first 12 games. So like our focus coming back was just win games. So, I mean, for me, I just zoned out and stay in that zone, stay in that moment. That's really all you can do if you want to keep doing stuff like that. Is that the mindset you kind of, or like the game mindset you kind of apply with every game or does it more so like hone in on that locked in moment? Like when you're on fire? I mean, every game's different just because it depends on how the games are going or how you're feeling, like when the game starts, I would say. But for me, I try to be in that locked in moment every game. I try to get to a place where I'm just so locked in that nothing affects me. But there are games where I'm not going to shoot a well, I'm not going to score well. So I still got to figure out how to affect the game in other ways. It just so happened that for the rest of the season, I was in that zone the rest of the season. I don't know how I could come out of it. I just couldn't come out of it every game. At some point, I think everybody knew at some point in the game, it was going to turn on and it was going to be bad for the other team. Even teams started to guard me differently. I started getting blitzed every ball screen, face guarded. It just got crazy for me. I hadn't seen that since high school. Even in college, they don't do you like that. They just play zone or put the best player on you. To get face guarded in the G League, for me, I took it as a sign of respect. I used to tell my brother all the time, it's crazy. I didn't think that would happen to me as a pro. I enjoyed it though. I enjoyed all of it. The talking trash, the things people used to say, the coaches telling me, you're not getting 40 tonight. I enjoyed all of it because it made the game fun. I can only imagine how amazing of a feeling that is. That's super cool. You had a game winner against the Windy City Bulls, pull up three over your defender as time expired. Was that your favorite individual moment of the season or was it something else? That was definitely my favorite moment. You live for moments to hit a big shot, especially at that level. I practiced that shot. A Hezzy pull three. Everybody knows that's my favorite move, but I practiced that shot every day of my life, probably since I was six, even in my living room with a little toy hoop, just shooting shots, counting down the buzzer. To hit one like that, I had my family, my uncle was there to be at that time. Just a moment period to know that I wasn't playing basketball two years ago, to now be in a position to take a game winning shot and help my team win. It meant everything to me just to be there, to know where I was to where I'm at now. Definitely my favorite moment. I've had some good games and good moments over the season, but nothing tops that. Did you ever hit a game winner in high school? Yeah, I hit a game winner on my arrival actually in high school, in their gym. Which one's better? I think the rivalry when I was in high school was better, just because of the stuff that was going on leading up to that game. I had two points at halftime in the game, like 35, a game winner. Wow. Everybody stormed the court. It was like a real rivalry. We didn't like each other. Threats before the game. I had the whole city out for that game too, so it was definitely fun. To hit a game winner when you're a pro, that's still a surreal feeling too. Yeah, I feel like they're different. The atmosphere and the rivalry part of the high school one can't be beat. Doing it as a pro, both are incredible. That's really cool. I was thinking about this too, there's a lot of talent in the G League. To lead the league in scoring is incredible. Also, with that talent, who was your favorite player to go up against? Saban Lee was tough. I've always been a fan of Myles Powell, even when he was in college at Seton Hall. I always tell my brother, I just want to have a matchup. I want to see it in person. I want my chance to just be on the court with him. I just like his game. I finally got a chance to play him twice this year. It was fun. My brother used to always tell me, when you see him, you got to score with him because he scores in bunches. He's tough. I told him when I seen him, you're tough. I'm used to watching him on TV, see all the highlights. To play against him, that was probably my favorite thing to do. And to gain his respect as a player. You always want to gain respect from other good players and stuff like that. Getting his respect was definitely my favorite thing this year. He was amazing to watch in college. He is crazy. He's different. I love his game. When you're going off, we talked on your 40-point games, you led the league in scoring. Do you ever get frustrated where you're not getting a lot of NBA teams calling you up? Or is that just something you kind of tune out? I mean, just tune it out. For me this year, I wasn't even a goal. I see my brother had a plan. And the plan was to just play well enough to get into summer league this year. To have a chance to get into a training camp. And so for me, when all this stuff happened and it started, it was just like, oh. Because it happened like, I had one game I scored 40, scored 40 again. And then I went 32. And then I went like, after that, I was just consistent. And so my brother was just like, what teams are going to say? They want to see you do it for the rest of the season. So for me, I was just trying to like, stay in that zone and try to stay consistent. And so, but you kind of can't worry about it. If you start playing for the call-ups or start playing for not what you're in the moment for, it's going to mess you up in a sense. Like you're just going to get selfish, forget about the team, stop trying to win. And I hate losing more than I hate anything. So that was my biggest thing, is try to win games. And so I kind of just kept trying to win games. And that's what it led to. Now it's the offseason. You know, I guess, what's this summer going to look like for you? You mentioned summer league. Are you hoping to play there? And you also are doing something with USA Basketball. Is that right? Yeah, I leave for USA Basketball tomorrow, actually. I'll be there until the 15th. Do a couple of mini camps and then figure out what I'm going to do about summer league. But other than that, I'm in the gym. This summer, we decided that that's what it's dedicated to. It's always been dedicated to that. But like I said, I'm locked in the gym. I don't want to do nothing else. I finally got a taste of what it's like to be a pro. And I know that I can play at that level now. So like I said, I'm hungry. I'm hungrier now than what I was before. So that's all I'm worried about, is getting better. Taking it day by day, stacking good days. I'll be ready for next year, for sure. Do you have any big picture goals? Or are you mostly just focused on the present moment right now? I mean, obviously, that big picture is NBA, obviously. Our thing is, if I don't focus on what I got to do right here in this moment, that means nothing. So it's there. It's definitely what I'm chasing. But I'm locked in on what I got to do right now. And what I do right now will help me take care of what I'm trying to get to. So it'll be there. Absolutely. What kind of advice would you give to a young player, let's say like high school or college player, that's dealing with a lot of adversity and maybe not getting the recognition that they deserve? Bet on yourself. Don't read into what everybody else says or who they're looking at over you. Get into that. Just because, like, if you put in the work and you trust the work and you just, when you get a chance to show it, make sure you show it and execute. Nobody knows your game better than you. Nobody knows you better than you. So believe in what everybody else says about you. It doesn't even matter. Just good, self-positive talk for yourself. Keep doing what you're doing. Follow your goals. Believe in your goals. Just trust the work. Trust God. You'll be all right, for sure. Some really good advice. That's good stuff right there, Craig. Well, that's all the questions we have. We really appreciate you coming on. And I can't tell you how excited we are to see you, to see you maybe over the summer in the Summer League and next season. It's going to be really exciting. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Nice meeting you, Craig. Nice meeting you too.