….But It’s Zach Randolph?

September 6th, 2008

ESPN: Knicks suggest dealing Randolph to Memphis 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, consistently sensible, or highly profitable. Just by playing him, you lose an untold amount on defence, something which Randolph simply does not do. And for all his versatility and skill as an offensive player, Zach has never had the greatest sense or awareness to fit into an offence efficiently – Randolph is a career 46.5% shooter who nowadays is starting his offence 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. 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 shot-blocker to counteract Zach’s absence 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 […]