Congratulations to you, Zach Randolph. With this latest arrest, you have moved out of a tie with Cliff Robinson and Rod Strickland for second place, and into a tie with Latrell Sprewell for first place on the "most entries on this website's off-court issues list" list, with 7 seperate documented incidents.
Clippers forward Zach Randolph was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol on Monday morning by the California Highway Patrol.
Several hours later, the Clippers suspended Randolph, 27, for two games for what they called "conduct detrimental to the team." There are five games left in the Clippers' season.
Also, multiple people insinuated that the Kirk Snyder story that featured earlier on this blog might have been an invention of mine. With that in mind, I'd like to remind you that, outside of the occasional attempted Monty Python-style gag on the player profiles (which are hopefully obvious in their inanity), this site is for the representation of true facts only. And lots of them, hopefully. This is not The Onion or the Serious Sports Network. Maybe it should be. But it isn't.
What is better than a holiday? I'll tell you what's better than a holiday: a full English breakfast is better than a holiday. It really is. Eggs, beans, a copious amount of sausages, bacon, toast, hash browns, mushies, black pudding if you've got it, OJ......yes, yes, that is definitely better than a holiday.
Another thing that is better than a holiday is two holidays, and that's what I've been having. This explains what looks to the casual observer like my continued absence. My last blog post, dated about three weeks ago, spoke of an impressive, overdue and highly important return to action, and yet this is only my second blog post of the whole season, after a month of November that saw only one feeble effort. A cynic would say that I've been away, and a particularly ruthless Mozambiquey (Mozambiquish?) Army General might have me shot for dereliction of duty.
However, that Mozambolian Army General would be wrong, and so would the cynic. I have not been neglecting this website, nor have I been neglecting you, dear viewer. Instead, I have been having a working holiday, if such a thing is possible for an unemployed man. While the blog hasn't been updated, the rest of this webshite has. In recent days, I have:
1: Provided a better vehicle for the site's increased focus on world basketball. (Look left.) While this remains an NBA focused website, a large part of that is documenting the players on the outskirts of the league with a realistic chance of being in it one day. For this reason, the rosters section has been expanded greatly, and player movement worldwide will now be documented via the worldwide transactions page, and the accompanying blog that'll probably never be used. The players database has also been expanded to contain such hugely important people as Joe Forte, Ansu Sesay, Rashad Anderson and Pablo Prigioni, so that they too may now not be written about. These developments come off of the background of the staggeringly mildly successful series of "Where are they now?" blog posts of last season, and such blog posts will now be made on that blog instead. Because I said so.
2: Begun the D-League coverage that was initially planned about two years ago. As the blurb above describes, this website is increasing its focus on the players just outside the NBA, and this is the reason for the sudden and uninspiring new D-League focus. A lot of the players in the D-League are crap and will never make the NBA, so the coverage will only focus on those with a perceived chance. For example, the insatiably named Xavier Whipple may never get a profile on here, whereas Antoine Jordan already did. This will probably be the high point of Antoine's life, and if Xavier Whipple kills himself in the coming days, then it was only a coincidence. All of this exciting new material can be found in the menu to the left, to the left. Mmmmmm. To the left, to the left. Everything I made in the box to the left.
3: Added more lookalikes, for those who like that sort of thing. I do.
4: Expanded the database, so that it now covers almost 10 million players. (Or 1,100. Whichever. Either way, it's more writing that I haven't yet done.)
5: Built three new features that you can't see yet. (Oh! The! Suspense!)
6: Written a DraftExpress post that you also can't see yet.
8: Finished the overdue, slightly pointless but entirely unique 2008 Offseason Review.
9: Updated all the pre-existing information, including (but not limited to): assistant coaches lists (see team pages), depth charts, rosters, cap holds, D-League affiliates, and everything except the salaries because I can't be bothered with them yet.
12: Agreed to be the host of a new, Around The Horn style podcast, featuring the four most pre-eminent Chicago Bulls podcasts on the web (Bulls Beat, Bullseye, Bullscast, and the other one). More details on this as, when, and if I can be bothered.
So you see, I do do stuff. (Note: my working holiday comes with less photos than my actual holiday. Be grateful.)
The downside of all this is that I might blog a bit less. As an aspiring NBA General Manager with no qualifications or skills to speak of, it's important that I use this website as my curriculum vitae to demonstrate my large and hopefully accurate knowledge of the NBA, and the players both in it and on its fringes. This is the reason for all the expansion. Will it work? No, but I'm doing it anyway.
But anyway, who the hell cares about all that. That's all just self congratulatory bollocks. Let's bring the noise. Here are some of my opinions on stuff.
1: The Al Harrington/Jamal Crawford trade looks like the epitomy of a win win trade. For a discontented player who had absolutely no worth on the depth chart, the Warriors managed to get a much needed short term fill-in at point guard, and a man who also isn't a bad fit alongside Monta Ellis, assuming that Monta ever plays for the Warriors again. Meanwhile, New York got a player that Mike D'Antoni can occasionally pretend is a centre (it's not that farfetched - Al Harrington played a lot of centre in his Hawks days, albeit not very well), while more importantly opening up a few more million in 2010 cap room. The Warriors have no 2010 ambitions, so they sacrificed something that they didn't want for something that they sorely needed. They will, however, suck anyway. (Incidentally, it's kind of a shame how things have worked out with Chris Mullin. He made a lot of mistakes in his early days in charge, but then put them right, and assembled a fine young roster. But then his superiors somewhat sold him out, Baron Davis let him down by opting out, and Ellis let him down by falling off a bike that he shouldn't have been on. Now he has a team with a poor record, a clusterfuck of a roster, and a contract that's about to run out with an owner that has completely different ideas to that of his own. It's a shame. For a while there, things really went his way. Oh well.)
2: Additionally, moving Zach Randolph and Mardy Collins to the Clippers for Tim Thomas and Cuttino Mobley was also a coup for the Knicks. For all the bellyaching I did about Donnie Walsh's summer moves - overpaying for a backup in Chris Duhon, drafting Danilo Galinari at number 6 who allegedly has no chance of being a star and who has the depth chart stacked against him, and dealing one of the team's few reasonable players in Renaldo Balkman to save money after overpaying for Duhon and being unwilling or unable to move the crappy players in front of him - I give Walsh the plaudits for finding a plan (2010), and executing it well. The fact that we're currently having to watch David Lee as a full time center is secondary - the Knicks had the balls and the patience to trade two of their three best players for unwanted bit parts, all for a one year saving on their salaries. Rarely is the 2010 plan (or any capspace plan) worthwhile for the teams involved. But in the Knicks case, it was. And now they've facilitated it. So well done them. As for the Clippers, God knows what they expect to achieve. Getting a 20/10 (not 2010) player for spare parts should always be desirable, but in this case, it isn't. And I can't write much more about their side of the deal without borrowing too heavily from this piece what I's already wrote.
3: The seminal baseball journalism blog FireJoeMorgan.com has closed down, as its proprietors - people with jobs - have decided to do those jobs instead. This seems like a misuse of their time, but whatever. The point is that they'll be missed. (For those unaware, FireJoeMorgan.com was a baseball site that didn't cover baseball, but which covered other people's coverage of baseball. It was not merely a campaign to fire Joe Morgan, as the URL would have suggested. Acerbic to a tee and with a turn of phrase that would make Pynchon weep, the site made baseball writers and broadcasters - particularly the one whose name was in the URL - look really bloody stupid. Yet it did not entirely set out to do this - all that the team behind it had to do was to let the writers write whatever they like. The writer's stupidity was all their original work. FJM just let them hang themselves with line breaks and the occasional bit of sense. That's all that was needed for the ridiculous old boys network that governs Major League Baseball - and those who cover it - to show their true inanity, as they spewed forth their eternal semi-ons for the easily rectifiable myths that have ensured their job security up until now. Sadly, it looks like they'll now get away with it. Damn shame.)
Finally, and most importantly, number 4: It only occured to me the other day just how phallic an overhead shot of half a basketball court looks.
That is all. I am now off to watch all the games that I've missed out on.
The Knicks have a trade proposal on the table with the Memphis Grizzlies that would see Darko Milicic and Marko Jaric dealt to New York in exchange for Zach Randolph.
OK, I get it. I do. I really do.
"Here, take Zach Randolph! Take this extremely talented player who just so happens to play at your weakest position! Nooooooo, we don't want anything back! You just take him!"
I get that. When your job is to improve your team, and you are offered a highly talented basketball player for essentially free, it's a tough one to turn down. And Zach Randolph really is highly talented.
But he's also Zach Randolph. And therein lies the problem.
For all of Zach's talents, his play has never been efficient, sensible, or highly profitable. Just by playing him, you lose an untold amount on defense, something which Randolph simply cannot do. And for all his versatility and skill as an offensive player, Zach has never had the sense or awareness to fit into an offense efficiently - Randolph is a career .465 shooter starting his offense from increasingly near the three point line, and with an intense aversion to passing. Bear in mind, this is a man once berated for selfishness by former teammate, Nick Van Exel. And Nick Van Exel knows a thing or two about selfishness.
The problem is exacerbated when looking at Memphis's other big men. Out of Hamed Haddadi, Hakim Warrick, Darrell Arthur, Marc Gasol and Antoine Walker, who represents a good pairing for Zach? Who is the weakside shotblocker to counteract Zach's complete failure in that area? There's a bit there, mainly coming from Gasol, but there's not much. Additionally, if Marc Gasol is to start at centre - and it looks like he has to - then how do you pair him and Randolph on offense? Pairing Randolph with a man who plays within 3 feet of the rim at all times (Eddy Curry) went painfully badly last season, so how much different will it be with Gasol? How does Zach fit?
Take a wider look at the roster, and the same applies. The Memphis roster is a symposium of good young talent and veterans that they're stuck with. In Rudy Gay and Orange Juice Mayonnaise (readers note: that joke wasn't funny, nor mine), the Grizzlies have two talented young scorers, and a roster rounded out with complimentary athleticism, defensive versatility and scoring talent. However, outside shooting remains a concern, and there remains a big hole at power forward. There's also a big rebounding hole on a team that was outrebounded by 2.9 boards a game last year, good for only 25th in the league.
Now Zach Randolph is a power forward all right, and he's constantly armed with a good rebounding rate. But if anyone expects him to come in and be primarily a rebounder, in the role that David Lee refused to fill, then they're either eternally optimistic, or privy to some blackmail that the rest of us aren't. No one has been able to convince Zach Randolph that his future lies in the post for a while now, and a year under the stewardship of Isiah Thomas is not good news for any player who struggles to understand their limitations.
The current reported trade talk sees Memphis giving New York nothing more than Marko Jaric and Darko Milicic. That is something, at least. Milicic is a player who has failed to pan out for three teams, and Marko is someone Memphis didn't want in the first place. The two players combine to earn $35,860,000 over the next three years, and they represent the two worst contracts that the Grizzlies have. (Readers note: Antoine Walker's contract is longer and bigger, but it's also fully unguaranteed beyond this year. And that's why Memphis wanted it in the first place. Same with Greg Buckner, sort of.) The next three years of Zach Randolph will pay him $48 million, and the cap hold for the first two years will be only a minor increase over what Darko and Marko currently take up. The only significant cap hit comes in the 2010/11 season, where Randolph will earn $17,333,333 to Jaric's $7,625,000, with Milicic already expired. But, as the Grizzlies have only 5 players under contract at that time, that isn't relevant of right now. The cost of obtaining Randolph is as low as it can be: two mostly insignificant bench players, who also have the franchise's two largest contracts.
But is that minimal price still too much for Zach Randolph?
It's a high risk move, clearly. But it's only a high reward move if the Zach Randolph of 2006/07 turns up, the one who put up a flawed but sexy 24 points and 10 rebounds a game. The one who wasn't as bad as usual on defense. The one who stayed largely in the post. The one who didn't complain too much. The one who was in the best shape of his life. The one who produced. To make this trade worthwhile, Memphis needs that Randolph back. But even after such a career best season, Portland were willing to trade him for nothing. Portland would rather pay Steve Francis $30 million to not turn up,rather than have even the good version of Randolph back. Warning sirens aplenty. If they get this Zach Randolph back, then they will be trading for the highest paid non-All Star of all time, and making a $48 million investment in a painful player with a painful contract and a temperamental history.
Risky. Too risky.
Will we ever see the better Randolph again? I don't know the answer, and I don't know about this trade. I get it, but......dude.
It provides a somewhat fitting conclusion to the Timberwolves dire season, and particularly that of Corey Brewer, who fouled and clanked his way to a 5.8 PPG, 3.7 RPG and 2.4 FPG rookie season, on 38% shooting. All a bit shite, really.
Still, for the hell of it, here are 5 other "Really Stupid Plays", in no particular order.
1: J.J. Redick in garbage time
2: David Wesley is garbage all the time
3: Derek Fisher to Yao Ming
4: Channing Frye does something reasonably manly for a change
5: Zach Randolph is a flat-out disgrace
Not pictured: One of any number of plays in which Drew Gooden rotates completely the wrong way on defense. People don't make highlights of those things, y'know? They should.
(Editor's note - season preview series will continue soon. I just can't be arsed with it right now. And besides, I'll only go and write something very long about one team just to find that they make a major trade immediately afterwards. It's inevitable. Sod's law, they call it.)
Why aren't NBA players loyal to their teams, such as how the fans are, and such as how the fans think that they should be?
Jonesy signed with Toronto for 3 years and $9.9 million in July 2006, as a part of the Raptors' cap room spendage that season. The third year of the contract was a player option year, for $3.5 million.
Upon being traded in February of this year to Portland in exchange for Juan Dixon, Jones agreed to forego his player option year as a part of the trade, a decision that, once made, cannot be recanted. Jones explained his acceptance to do this as such:
"From seeing the team, knowing some of the players and knowing the direction they're headed, I was more than happy to be a part of it".
Bless him. How sweet. Such gallantry and chivallry will serve him well in future life.
Apparently, though, they aren't good traits in this here NBA game. For it was barely four months later that Portland traded him once again, this time to New York as a part of the multi player Zach Randolph deal. Still currently in New York, Jones is faced with the very real possibility of being waived by the Knicks, due to their present roster spots crunch and their desire to keep both Jared Jordan and Demetris Nichols. Jones was only included in the deal for his expiring contract, as was Dan Dickau - Dickau has already been waived, which doesn't bode well for Jones. And if Jones does wind up getting waived, training camps have begun and most teams have full rosters. Barring a stroke of luck, the earliest return Fred would be looking at would be in early 2008.
The irony is that Jones' contract would not have even been expiring, had he not declined the player option 16 months before he needed to make a decision.
So Fred's loyal move towards the Blazers, giving up a year of multi million salary and a year of almost-certain employment just to be able to join them, has now left him perilously close to a situation in which he could be out of the league altogether, only 16 months after signing a three year deal.
Wouldn't happen in the real world, let me tell you.
And that's why the players are loyal to themselves first and truly foremost. Fred turned down $3.5 million in an act of charity, yet now, if worst comes to the worst, he won't even earn $100,000 in the D-League next season, should he get stuck there.
If he has not done so already, Isiah Thomas needs to write an autobiography. Actually, he needs to write about 3. One about his time as a player, one as a General Manager, and one for amusing miscellany. I can safely say without a shadow of a doubt that I would buy all three. Not even a moment's hesitation needed. And I think the same applies to about half of you. Maybe give him his own TV channel, and just run endless documentaries on him. I'd watch them. There's just too much fun yet inexplicable stuff going on at all times where Isiah Thomas is concerned.
Win or lose (but normally lose), these Isiah-led Knicks have been an absolute fixture at the top of the NBA's "sweet merciful crap, did you hear this?" listings. From the moment he took over, 'forfeiting' the 'future' of the franchise by trading for Stephon Marbury (the notion that Milos Vujanic constituted most of the Knicks future is still funny), Isiah has continued to dumbfound, amaze and amuse in equal measures. Whether it be by making the type of trade for which they had to invent their own category ("A Trade Only Isiah Could Make"), or for one of many stories that come out about him (such as his role in instigating the brawl against Denver, or wanting to kill Bill Simmons, which is the Tarantino film they never made but should have done), Thomas and the Knicks in general always seem to rustle up something with which to entertain. You can't help but disbelieve the roster moves that he makes, and you can't help but believe the stories that you hear about him. He's just that sort of person. Never say never with Isiah Thomas. (Or is that Mike Tyson? Hmmm. Anyway.)
This offseason, he went and did it again. Twice.
Apart from the occasional grumbling about potentially re-signing Allan Houston - a man Thomas tried to dump in any way possible when he first joined the Knicks, before Houston finally accepted a medical retirement, a decision he seemed to have reneged on - no news really comes out of Knicks land these days unless it's about the sexual harassment brought against Isiah by Zach Ra......err, Anucha Browne Sanders, former Knicks marketing vice president or something. Everything that I know about the subject has come directly from Bill Simmons's recap of the whole shebang, which answered many of my questions, but with two glaring omissions:
1) What the hell does Stephon Marbury have to do with any of this? What does his desire to cop some free ass have to do with her being fired for being crap at her job? 2) And who cares who called who a bitch? I dunno, maybe I'm just naive.
Either way, I'm not going into the subject further. There it is for you all to see.
Isiah's other storyline came before the start of the trial (which seems so long ago now), when he made the biggest headlines on draft night, trading Channing Frye, Steve Francis and a future second rounder to Portland for Zach Randolph, Dan Dickau, Fred Jones and the draft rights to Demetrius Nichols. With an overflowing roster, it is entirely possible that only one of those last three makes the team this season, or none if Allan Houston is signed. So they're not really factors here. Additionally, Francis was traded to Portland knowing that:
a) Portland would buy him out, and b) Had New York been unable to deal him, they would have bought him out instead. Francis was merely salary filler.
The trade was essentially therefore just Frye for Randolph. When you put it that way, it sounds OK. But let's look a little deeper.
The Knicks of last year were a talented, but ill-fitting group of players, with a lot of distinct weaknesses to address. A very good rebounding team in spite of having Eddy Curry at center, the Knicks consistently had trouble defending the perimeter, ranking third last in the league in three point percentage against. They also turned it over way too much, ranking dead last in the league with 17.1 a game, whilst also ranking second last in blocked shots per game with 3.1, a mark bettered (or worsened) only by Milwaukee.
Now to get rid of Francis goes some way to helping with these deficiencies, particularly those of the turnover rate and offensive stagnificationness that the Knicks would go through at times last year. The offense revolved around force feeding Curry, who responded with almost 20 points a game, but it wasn't exactly the most inventive or successful strategy, and it was to cause problems whenever New York needed somewhere else to turn. Inefficient scoring from the perimeter players, plus the team-wide turnover woes, left New York as a one dimensional offensive team. And that offense was rather easy to nullify with a bit of common sense and flopping, as Chicago demonstrated on more than one occasion last year. When combined with New York's poor defense, it didn't make for a very promising lineup, which was reflected in their final record - New York ended up 32-50, firmly entrenched in the lottery. And they didn't get to keep their lottery pick, either. But you probably knew that already.
Why, then, did they decide Zach Randolph would somehow solve these problems?
While far from an exact clone of Eddy Curry, Randolph and he do share similar weaknesses. Both are poor defensive players, with mediocre at best man-to-man defense and abysmal help defense. Both players also turn it over way too often, stagnate the offense due to their lack of passing skill and passing desire, and are also almost exclusively to be found in the low post on offense (or that's where Randolph should be, at least). Also, New York has a relatively young core of players - is that really the kind of scenario in which you want to bring in Zach Randolph, Mr Locker Room Chemistry 2006?
Portland certainly didn't think so - they would rather pay Steve Francis $30 million to never ever turn up than they would have Randolph around their group of young players.
Then again, it's only Channing Frye, so maybe it was worth a flyer. Maybe it'll be so quirky that it works, in the same way that Rick Brunson is so bad that he's great. Maybe.
There's also the whole "is Marbury on crack?" thing to reflect upon, but I'm not sure I can think of anything interesting to say about it. However, in the extremely unlikely event that you have no idea what I'm talking about, watch this.
One thing the Knicks on-court product of last season never lacked in was drama. If you were a Chicago fan rooting in your heart of hearts for the Knicks to lose (as was I), or just a Knick fan hoping in your heart of hearts that the Knicks would win, then you ran the full gambit of emotions throughout their season. Whether they won or lost, whether they were being blown out or were miles ahead, and whether they were playing a good team or a shit team, all Knicks games seemed to culminate with high drama finishes. Sometimes, they were on the winning end - see David Lee's tip in versus Charlotte, Eddy Curry's three pointer vs Milwaukee, or Steve Francis's three versus Washington. And sometimes, they were on the losing end, such as with Josh Howard's game saving block for Dallas early on, or Marbury's missed final second free throw versus Seattle.
Whatever the result, it made for some entertainment. And that's a good thing. This Knick team has got some fight, and some pride within them.
They just haven't got the ability, nor the cohesion.
The old saying goes that 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts'. And it's true. San Antonio proves this adage time and again, continuing to win championships with only three legitimate NBA players (I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea). New York Knicks teams under Isiah's regime have proven much the same in the complete opposite way: continuing to add talented players time and again, it so far hasn't helped any, as the Knicks continue to miss the playoffs.
Next year figures to be no different. Adding an extremely gifted player who is the total package of talent, attitude and contract while solving none of the team's weaknesses and also consequently forcing arguably their best player to the bench doesn't seem like a winning formula to me. It sure as shit wasn't when Isiah tried it with Steve Francis, or Stephon Marbury, or Jalen Rose.
But, I guess we'll see. I'm a natural cynic, what would I know about anything anyway?
(Also, gambling tip for you gamblers out there - go and bet on Renaldo Balkman leading the Knicks in blocked shots per game next year. Because it's going to happen. And it's probably going to be around about 0.9 a game. Good fun.)
Sham is a miserable and self-effacing little bastard, whose basketball opinions are often riddled with bias, insecurity, and rank immaturity. He has also never played the sport, and the only game he has ever been to see was a Ware Rebels game back in 2001. The night bus didn't show up and he had to walk the 9 miles home. It was after this that his passion for basketball really took off.
He considers himself to be Britain's foremost NBA expert, an arbitrary title that carries with it no basis in fact, or any worldly significance. He also wrote this section of the website in third person narrative, purely for reasons of arrogance.
Copyright ShamSports.com, 2005-2010. Every published word on this website
is copyrighted to the website's owner, including (but not limited to)
the really stupid ones that I wish I'd never written.
