Julius Randle knows he can get to the basket.

Give him the ball outside the paint, watch him settle into what he loves to do. It starts with a pump fake. His eyebrows shoot up and his mouth pops open as he initiates his attack with a shimmy, a dribble and a stutter-step.

He’s on his way.

Startled by Randle’s sudden speed, the defender is backpedaling. Randle tucks his chin into his chest and spins toward the rim.

Or he forcefully drives his right shoulder into the man guarding him to clear space, setting up a soft finish with his left hand.

“He puts the ball on the floor like no other power forward in this league,” Dirk Nowitzki said, following an early-season matchup.

Randle, the Lakers’ second-year forward, has always dominated offensively with power and strength.

What was good enough to get him to the NBA may also be good enough to get by. While the Lakers are once again one of the worst teams in the NBA, sporting a 2-12 record while balancing 37-year-old Kobe Bryant with a stable of young talent, Randle has been a bright spot. He is averaging 11.1 points and 8.6 rebounds.

However, the Lakers are challenging the No. 7 pick in the 2014 draft to expand his game to include a reliable jump shot, a skill Randle, who turns 21 Sunday, has never needed to rely on.

“I’ve known the basics,” Randle said.

But coaches say his form is loose. His left elbow juts outward, and Lakers’ first-year shooting coach Tracy Murray laments a hitch in Randle’s form that results in a catapult effect, rather that one smooth motion.

Murray, whose 12-year playing career included a season with the Lakers, says it is “crucial” Randle adds a jumper. Hall of Famer James Worthy, whom the Lakers hired this year to work with frontcourt players, said it is “vital.”

Both agreed that a reliable mid-range game is a higher priority than Randle being able to finish with his right hand, often perceived to be the biggest hole in Randle’s game.

“(A jump shot) keeps everybody honest (defensively),” Coach Byron Scott said, “and if you have to play him for making jump shots, now it gives him the ability to do the thing we know he can do, which is get to the basket.”

Fourteen games into his first true NBA season, opponents have become less likely to challenge Randle’s jumper, either waiting for him to drive or baiting him to shoot it.

“They’re giving it to him,” said Worthy.

And why wouldn’t they?

Randle is shooting 42.8 percent from the field, but according to stats compiled by the NBA, is making just 22.2 percent of his attempts 10 to 19 feet from the basket. Per Basketball-Reference.com, he has made just eight shots from outside the paint, none in the last four games.

The difference between Randle and many other post players who score right at the rim is that he shoots the jumper regularly. Roughly one in five of his attempts this season has come from 10 feet or farther.

“He’s had a jumper,” Worthy said, “but he’s never had to use it effectively. It’s got to be without hesitation.”

Randle’s plight is common among physical and athletic big men. Scott is reminded of Hall of Famer Karl Malone, who evolved into one of the NBA’s most reliable mid-range shooters.

“His athleticism being able to get up and down the floor was fantastic,” Scott said, “but he couldn’t shoot the ball outside the paint. Three years later, he’s making 16-, 17-footers on a consistent basis.”

Worthy sees a similarity in Clippers star Blake Griffin, whose jump shot percentage hovered in the low 30s for the first four seasons of his career, according to Basketball-Reference.

Last season, that number rose to 40.1 percent and this year, through 15 games, Griffin is knocking down 48.8 percent of his jumpers.

“It’s kind of like how Apple releases versions of the iPhone,” Griffin wrote in a February article in The Players’ Tribune. “Each year we’ve worked, and worked to be able to roll out a new feature of my shot.”

Second-year Lakers guard Jordan Clarkson said he went through a similar process before his rookie year, when he revisited and improved every step of the shooting process.

“Start with your feet,” he said. “Elbow, wrist, what two fingers you’re shooting with, what side of the hand it’s coming off of. After that, just reps. But you’ve got to make sure you’re practicing the right stuff.”

Randle spent most of last year focusing on conditioning and getting comfortable again on the court after he suffered a broken leg in the 2014 season opener. The Lakers worked on his shot only in general terms.

“We didn’t go into it real extensively to say, ‘These are the things you have wrong with it,’” Scott said. “That’s the thing we can pinpoint now, where we’re watching him. Gives us a little more data to work on this year.”

Aiding Scott have been numbers provided to him by the Lakers’ bulked-up analytics department. In the past, Scott was resistant, if not indifferent, to advanced statistics, but said Randle’s development is one area in which he’s found them helpful.

Now he has hard numbers on which to base a plan he might have previously developed by relying on a simple eye test.

“When he’s on the move, he’s not bad,” Scott said of Randle. “It’s when he catches it and the defense is standing way back there, that’s when he has the trouble. That’s the one we want to work on the most.”

The Lakers are taking a gradual approach, with short-term goals as well as a plan for the offseason.

“These guys have gotten here on their talent,” Murray said. “You don’t want to do anything to kill their confidence, and changing a shot during the season can kill their confidence. So you just tweak little things.”

Part of what makes Randle so effective in transition and in the post is his foot-speed. Murray wants him to slow that down in the process of his jump shot.

“So take the footwork we gave him,” Murray said, “step into his shot slowly, and knock it down.”

That’s for now.

Next summer Randle will be asked to unlearn the shot he has always had and start focusing on things as fundamental as forming an “L” with his elbow.

“I’m just not sure if he knows how much work it’s going to take to do it,” Murray said.

Randle said his jump shot is more or less the one that first took shape when his playing career began in youth leagues in suburban Dallas.

“It was just learned everywhere I’ve gone,” Randle said. “I haven’t done anything where I’ve changed my shot dramatically. Little things, getting rotations on the ball, getting lift, legs, all that stuff.”

If Murray is successful with his renovation project, Randle’s wild jumper will be replaced with a carefully constructed shot. The Lakers believe it could make Randle one of the most versatile forwards in the NBA and a potential All-Star.

“You will always go back to your bread and butter,” Worthy said, “and his is quickness, power. But in the NBA, every night, he’s playing against length. They scout him more; they know what he can do.”

Arming Randle with a reliable jump shot, however, means defenders won’t always know what Randle will do.

Contact the writer: boram@ocregister.com