"Why should you wait any longer? Take a chance. It could only make you stronger. It's your time, it's your time."

Perhaps Minnesota Timberwolves President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly was listening to Prince when he made a shockingly bold trade just prior to the start of the season, sending All-NBA big man Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks in exchange for Donte DiVincenzo and Julius Randle.

Halfway through Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, Randle is proving Connelly to be a genius for his gutsy trade.

The Minnesota Timberwolves seemed to have everything go wrong for them in Game 1 against the Oklahoma City Thunder. They were turning the ball over left and right, Rudy Gobert committed two fouls in two minutes, and Anthony Edwards missed half of the second quarter getting treatment in the locker room for an ankle injury.

Most of the team certainly couldn't get any momentum. The team's shooters off the bench were ice-cold; Naz Reid, Donte DiVincenzo and Nickeil Alexander-Walker went a combined 2-for-16 (13 percent) from 3-point range. Yet Julius Randle, in his first season with the Wolves, went supernova to not only keep Minnesota in the game but to give them a halftime lead.

Randle shot 6-for-8 from the field, including 5-for-6 from deep, to score 20 of the team's 48 points in the first half. He shot confidently and irrespective of the Thunder's defense on him, and without his herculean shot-making the Wolves would be in a much different place.

It's been something of a renaissance for Randle in the Western Conference playoffs. In the Wolves' first two series he averaged 24 points, six rebounds and six assists per game, including an evisceration of the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco to suffocate any hope of a comeback. Anthony Edwards has obviously been the team's best player, but Randle has been right there as a do-it-all sidekick playing the best basketball of his career.

The Timberwolves still have plenty of basketball to play, both in Game 1 and throughout the series. If they have Randle playing at such a level, however, their chances to winning the series go up substantially. After years of being chased by a reputation that Randle shrinks from the big moments and isn't the right kind of player to contend for championships, and less than a year after the Knicks coldly moved on from him, he is proving them wrong and Tim Connelly right.

Julius Randle is balling out, and it's led to powerful things happening in Minnesota.