The Randolph Question
Knicks president Donnie Walsh labeled the widely rumored trade of forward Zach Randolph to the Grizzlies for Darko Milicic and Marko Jaric “dormant” in the pages of the New York Times today.
Other recent reports contend negotiations are ongoing with the addition of a protected first-round pick from the Knicks and potentially an additional player from the Grizzlies in the mix.
For the record, the awkward non-comment responses I’ve gotten on the subject from team sources who might know suggests to me that there’s plenty of fire behind the smoke on this rumor.
I haven’t had a chance to weigh in much on this topic as of yet, though I obviously will in a big way if and when something happens.
But, to get on the record clearly, let me say that I would not want Zach Randolph on this team. Period.
Zach Randolph: A bad, bad man.
If I were a lawyer assigned to the case, I could certainly construct an argument in favor of the deal: Randolph would be the most talented player in the trade. He’s a proven scorer and rebounder who fits the team’s primary positional need. He’s still only 27. And the deal as outlined is about the best you could do, mitigating Randolph’s high salary by dumping your own worst contract in the form of Jaric.
All that said, I’m hoping Donnie Walsh is telling the gospel truth.
There’s a huge case to be made against pursuing Randolph — a player who is overrated on the court despite his obvious attributes and who has proven to be an absolute cancer in the locker room and timebomb in the community.
But the most damningly concise argument against Randolph probably comes from the manner in which he was jettisoned from Portland last summer.
Randolph was coming off his very best pro season, one in which he averaged 24 points and 10 rebounds a game. But Portland had assembled a very promising young nucleus of high-upside players who also looked to be solid citizens (Brandon Roy, Lamarcus Aldridge, Greg Oden) and decided that they simply couldn’t afford to have Randolph on that team. They were helped along in this decision, according to local media accounts, by emerging star Roy, who allegedly went to management and demanded that Randolph be moved.
How desperate was Portland to simply remove Randolph from their team? Not only did they get minimal on-court value in return from the New York Knicks (back-up power forward Channing Frye), they paid $30 million dollars to buy out the contract of guard Steve Francis to make it happen. Portland essentially paid $30 million to make Randolph go away. And the Blazers are widely recognized as one of the best-run teams in the league in recent years.
Why? Here’s some quick evidence. I’ll go into more detail if and when a trade happens.
Citizen Zach:
A brief primer on Randolph’s long history of problems can be found in this Times piece.
A more detailed, and more damning, portrait of Randolph at his worst can be found via these gruesome True Hoop posts. Even if no charges were filed, this can’t make you feel very good about having Randolph on your team.
Teammate Zach:
Randolph has gotten into physical altercations with teammates Ruben Patterson and Nate Robinson, both sketchy characters in their own right. But I kind of like this quote from Mike Moreau, writing for HoopsWorld about the Knicks woes early last season, about the good karma Randolph brings to teams:
Zach: Your attitude, effort and behavior last night in the Garden was a disgusting display of disrespect to our fans. You have a lot of making up to do to them. In order to learn to handle this assignment of coming off the bench, here is Manu Ginobili's cell number: 1-800-BE-A-PRO.
Player Zach:
God bless True Hoop. Three choice nuggets:
True Hoop proprietor and big Blazers fan Henry Abbott breaks down Randolph’s game and impact on the Blazers:
Zach can do a lot of things on the basketball court. But he's the anti-fast break. He doesn't force the turnovers inside to start the break, and he doesn't get down court in time to finish it. Similarly, he can't play center, so that means you have to pair him with another big slow dude. And who is scared of a fast-breaking team that has two slow dudes on it?Even more importantly, Randolph needs the ball to be effective. There's a cruel irony to this: he made a name for himself as a rookie as one of the greatest garbage players of all time. Long arms with amazing hands at the end made him a put-back machine. He'd somehow grab just about any rebound in traffic, and then he'd get a high-percentage shot off without any trouble.
He also, as a kind of cruel bonus, had all kinds of post moves. To most viewers, that seemed to be an even better proposition. He can get all those second-chance buckets, and then we'll give it to him twenty times in the post and ride him to championships.
But ever since they started making him a focal point of the offense, the team has been mired in the bog of underutilized teammates. I mean, the fact is he's not a terribly alert passer. He does not have eyes in the back of his head, and sometimes it seems like he doesn't have eyes in the front either. I can't name a player who "blossomed" playing alongside Zach Randolph. Instead, there have been young players who did what they could with limited touches.
Which is no way to run a youth movement. Which is part of the reason Zach Randolph is no longer a Blazer.
A Knick’s blogger on Randolph:
Zach Randolph is a massively talented player. Make no mistake about it. He is a great low post presence, and the man can rebound better than 90% (maybe more) of the NBA. But this is not a man who will ever be taught to do anything than to try to score 20 points and net 10 rebounds, because that stock of being the "20/10 guy" got him this contract, and he is not going to change his game now, or any time soon.Since the Knicks are being actively hurt by Zach Randolph (whose True Shooting Percentage is 207th in the NBA among qualified players, while his usage rate is 15th -- think about that for a second!), and since he has been poisoned by "20/10," the Knicks are best off just divesting themselves of the guy, even if it means taking back near-scrubs like Dan Gadzuric and Bobby Simmons.
An outside perspective:
Kevin Arnovitz of ClipperBlog, fresh home after watching the Clippers nip the Knicks: "You can't overstate just how horrible Zach Randolph is defensively, and how little he seems to care."
