"I'm frustrated," Randle texted. "I just want to play basketball."
"Patience," Kobe Bryant responded to him.
"I'm 19 years old," Randle wondered. "How do I have patience?"
"It's the only choice," Bryant told him.
"You'll see."
Now, Randle is sitting in a corner booth of Don Chuy's in Playa Vista on a sunny September afternoon and laughs, "I do see it now."
Randle is forever grateful about the way his boyhood idol climbed down from the posters on his bedroom and into his basketball life.
"The biggest person to help get me through this was Kobe – by far," Randle says.
I'm also glad MWP is getting to him about his ball stopping ways, which had me very concerned during the summer league.
After World Peace didn't like the way Randle was stopping the ball in a practice facility pickup game, he shot him a text later in the afternoon. "Go watch how the Spurs move without the ball," World Peace instructed Randle. So, Randle turned on his laptop and started watching the simple genius of the Spurs.
As Randle proudly remembers, "The next week, [Metta] said, "I can see you've been watching the film.'" He goes out of his way to make things easy for me."
Can't wait to see him play.
Adrian Wojnarowski | Yahoo Sports