Star or Black Hole? The Statistical Myth of Zach Randolph

there’s no way they directly create cap space for a team that could legitimately steal Lebron away

Clearly he’s a talented player. Statistically relevant. But he’s got other issues. Apparently.

Had to get out of the PJs and drive carpool as I typed that last line.

I’ve wanted to look at Memphis for awhile now, since they signed Iverson, and I think it would be really interesting to compare them to the Clippers. Don’t want to go too far into it on this particular thread, but I can take the quick cursory view. Generally I like to leave these things as bait for SP, then he does all the heavy lifting and provides all sorts of excellent elements and perspectives, and then I just draft off of him.

I get the point about Cleveland, but it didn’t happen. And there’s no way to guess if it was even close to happening. When Zbo was branded as untradeable and the Clips got the #1 pick and Griffin, we spent some time looking around for teams that might benefit from adding Zach to their roster. Memphis quickly emerged as the obvious choice, and I don’t recall Cleveland being discussed much. Memphis was the frontrunner because Zach’s skill set was a tidy fit (low-post scoring, rebounding), his deal is relatively brief (2 years), and the main thing is this: Memphis isn’t really trying to win and reach the playoffs. That was a key factor, from my view at least, in why Memphis made sense and Cleveland never came up. There’s an opposing view to this argument, but if you have young guys on the rise and you don’t want to be an absolute NBA doormat and “laughingstock,” Zbo makes some sense—and that was before the Grizz added Iverson on a 1-year deal, which makes the team much more interesting. Memphis is going to have a decent product for their fans to watch now, one of the best in their history.

But if you want to win? If you’re competing for a championship like Cleveland? If you need that one guy to change things up and put you over the top? Somehow Zach Randolph isn’t somebody that comes to mind. In fact it seems completely counter-intuitive. Maybe that was CC’s point, and I was just reading it wrong. Maybe his argument was that the Celts signed Rasheed as their guy to provide the extra boost and KG injury insurance, and Cleveland should have considered Zbo and his low-post scoring and rebounding. The difference there, of course, is that Boston is paying virtually nothing for Sheed (vet minimum?) while Cleveland would have had to make a trade to the Clips and would have been paying Zbo 35 million or whatever it is for the next two years. Another reason why Cleveland makes no sense is that, let’s say Lebron signs with another team next summer. Cleveland has some significant capspace with LBJ coming off their books, but they would be paying Zbo a lot of money, when they could be making offers to other players. So Cleveland never made sense to me, and still doesn’t, and it didn’t happen.

But if CC’s point was that Zbo isn’t as bad as people might think, and he’s trying to shore up the favorable impression that some of us got from his brief Clipper sojourn, then the better question seems to me to be what’s going to happen in Memphis. How does he fit?
The quick version is that Memphis has potential young stars in Rudy Gay and OJ Mayo, making them set at the wings. They had a glut of young PGs and shipped out Kyle Lowry and J Crittenden to go all in on Mike Conley, which seems to be a good decision (and an even better one when you add Iverson for one year). They had a solid, promising rookie banger in Marc Gasol, a good defender and rebounder whose game may become more refined over the next few years. They drafted Thabeet, who seems like a stiff to me and a woeful 2nd pick, but in a few years he might be a strong defensive presence.

So what were they missing? No low post presence. Thabeet’s not a rebounder. Is Darko still on the Grizz? (Hence the cursory glance: there’s a lot I don’t know). So what? Before trading for Zbo they had, if I’m right, Gasol and Darko or PF X as the starting bigs, or they could have started Thabeet and Gasol, but they know Thabeet isn’t close to being ready yet. Zbo brings them all of the things that CC points out. He’s a legit 20-10 guy. That’s saying something, when your other big men options are anything but, when they’re just question marks or young. Being able to throw the ball into Zbo in the post is a great option, and will take a lot of pressure off of Gay and Mayo. It allows Gasol to be the starting center, which is a perfect role for him. It allows Thabeet to be the backup center, which is the perfect role for him. If Darko is still on the roster, it allows him to be Darko, with no expectations and somehow some potential upside still.

Then we can talk about Iverson. Iverson going to Memphis, with the pieces mentioned above, is very different from him going to former, fading champion Detroit from Denver. Again, part of Memphis’ approach is that no one expects them to win, but instead of being incredibly crappy they might be kind of scary and win a bunch of games. I don’t know where Conley is on his learning curve, but he’s young and will presumably be better at this time next year after Iverson is gone. Iverson as a starter, with Conley as a backup, is a pretty strong hand—especially for a team like Memphis.

So I have to say I’m intrigued and even bullish on a lineup of Gasol-Zbo-Gay-Mayo-Iverson, with Conley, Thabeet and who knows who else coming off the bench. And that’s how Zbo fits, at a glance. They have scoring and playmakers. On that team, it doesn’t matter so much that Zbo doesn’t play defense. Iverson doesn’t play defense. But Phoenix and Don Nelson and Mike D’Antoni teams don’t play defense either. I don’t even know who the coach is. I don’t know much at all, but from what I can tell, Memphis is going to be interesting and fun to watch.