![]() ![]() "My job is always to make him think: Do more. You had 12 rebounds but you could've had seven more," Webster would tell him. "They lost because you could've done more. ![]() 1 Wildcats plunged out of the polls, losing nine regular-season games, Webster used it to motivate Randle, who had a habit of dominating one half of a game and disappearing for the other half. He's also the harshest critic of UK's leading scorer and rebounder. Webster is friend, brother and father figure to Randle, depending on what he needs. He watched Randle blossom into a McDonald's All-American himself, a consensus top-three player in the Class of 2013, a college star and projected top-five pick in the next NBA draft. Webster took over the teaching as Randle outgrew his mom's basketball lessons. He was a McDonald's All-American in 1989, scored 2,258 points for the Sooners, became an NBA draft pick. He totally respected me, but he needed a male figure he could look up to and trust."Īnd Webster had been all the places Randle wanted to go. "Being a single woman raising a young man, I saw it as God bringing Jeff to us at the right time. It was a perfect fit from that moment," Kyles said. ![]() Randle's tears stopped, his mood brightened, and an instant bond formed. "My message to him: If you don't like to lose, Julius, find a way not to," Webster said. The 6-foot-8 Webster put one of his long arms around Randle, who at that point didn't even come up to his chest. When Randle lost a youth-league championship game Webster came to watch, the kid was devastated, crying and inconsolable. She didn't want her child to become some basketball mercenary, but then she saw them together. Webster, a former Oklahoma basketball star, had come to recruit Randle, then a fifth-grader, to play for his AAU team. Jeff Webster recognized that spirit in Randle the first time they met, almost a decade ago. "They were just bigger and stronger than us, but it definitely put a competitive spirit in us." "I'd be so mad, I'd want to fight my sister," he remembers. She'd taunt him, too, especially when she teamed up with his older sister and pummeled Randle and his grade-school buddy in pickup games. He was still a toddler when she first put a ball in his hand, and he slept with it every night, but he had to be careful as he got older because she'd snatch it away and swish a jump shot in his face. Other than a memorable game against LeBron James at the NBA superstar's camp when Randle was 16 years old, his mother is the last person he remembers bullying him on a basketball court. But if not, you leave my number alone," Kyles said. "If you're going to get out there and do something with it, yes. ![]()
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