This is a bad mistake. December 27, 2007
Posted by mb in david lee, eddy curry, zach randolph.1 comment so far
Mark my words, if you think the answer to the Knicks’ woes is to avoid playing Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry together, you are mistaken.
This, with all due respect to Howard Beck of the New York Times, is horsecrap. When the Knicks have been at their best this year–think Utah, think Denver–it’s been because Randolph and Curry have been operating effectively simultaneously. The problem is that when Curry has retreated into his mental hole–and it’s only been Curry–the Knicks haven’t found ways to keep him involved, either within the offensive gameplan (such as it is) or within the confines of Curry’s own mind. To the extent that the duo has failed, it’s been because one of them has sort of sucked. It does not follow logically or factually that it’s Zach Randolph’s fault.
Observe. From the article:
A statistical analysis provided by 82games.com helped illustrate the problem — and pointed to Curry as the main culprit. Over the first 23 games of the season, the Knicks were, on average, outscored by 7.9 points (per 48 minutes) when Curry and Randolph shared the court. When Randolph played without Curry, the Knicks were outscored by only 2.3 points per 48 minutes.
Most striking is that Curry, the Knicks’ leading scorer last season, is a greater drag on the team. The Knicks are outscored by 16 points per 48 minutes when Curry plays without Randolph.
Read that again, and carefully. This essentially confirms everything I just said.
David Lee, who IS the other big man when Randolph sits, and whom I generally love, cannot play defense. Read that statement again, then watch him and him alone for a couple quarters. Hustles like a maven, but cannot guard anyone. Period. Playing him more will not solve the Knicks’ major problem. (Playing Balkman will, but of course no one’s complaining about that).
More foolishness:
It also seems clear that Randolph’s arrival has sent Curry into a funk. He is averaging 14.2 points and 5.2 rebounds this season, after averaging a career-best 19.5 points and 7 rebounds last season. His field-goal attempts and free-throw attempts have decreased.
This, of course, wasn’t the case at all over the first month of the season, when Curry’s numbers were perfectly fine. But Curry has, again, disappeared all of a sudden. Why is that Zach Randoloph’s fault?
For the last damn time: They are different players. Randolph plays an entirely different game than Curry. Watch the games and figure it out. To the extent that the interior passing of Curry has been poor, it’s not because Randolph is there (and a lot of the team’s ball movement problems generally are attributable to the backcourt players).
A case can be made that Randolph’s arrival has, in fact, hurt several Knicks. Lee, playing four fewer minutes a game than last season, has had declines in scoring, rebounding and field-goal percentage. Quentin Richardson, who has also been benched lately, is averaging career lows in points a game (7.3) and field-goal percentage (.324). Jamal Crawford, a streak shooter, struggled for weeks until recently finding his rhythm.
This is idiotic. Of course when you get a 20-10 guy, he’s going to get more shots and others will get less. Considering that Crawford’s shot well under 40 percent for his Knick tenure, including about three ghastly shots per game prior to this season, I’m not sure this is a bad thing. Quentin Richardson is a poor fit on a non-running team to begin with. That David Lee cannot hit those shots he DOES get speaks volumes about the degree to which one can reasonably expect him to be the savior of the starting lineup.
Howard Beck: I like you, I do. But I don’t think any of the terrific beat writers to come before you at the Times (the divine Selena Roberts, Chris Broussard, Clifton Brown) would commit such a vacuous viewpoint of what afflicts this team to print.
Dust hasn’t cleared, but let’s yammer anyway. November 14, 2007
Posted by mb in isiah thomas, stephon marbury, zach randolph.add a comment
The chorus will come: This is a good thing. Stephon Marbury was crazy. Stephon Marbury couldn’t function without the lion’s share of the shots. Every team Marbury leaves gets better afterwards. Who needs him?
Make no mistake, though. Very little about this is good.
Marbury had been, for the most part, a reasonably functional part of the offense. If he had exhibited a problem this season, it was his perimeter defense careless passing at untimely junctures at games. But no one can say that he had starved the (prolific, to this point) Randolph-Curry tandem of shots, and Jamal Crawford had gotten his share of looks and then some. His 2007-08 flaws were not the stuff championships were made of, but they do not fit into the usual Marbury misfit mythology that generally circulates. So, there: You can now ignore 75% of tomorrow’s New York Daily News and New York Post coverage of the Marbury mess. You’re welcome.
Mardy Collins exists chiefly as an idea at this point. Nate Robinson is not a point guard in any readily cognizable sense. Jamal Crawford’s major problems so far have all involved his handle and his dishing. Seeing as this team was built to make the playoffs now, shouldn’t somebody proven run the point? Marbury may need to sit when he’s having a bad night, and perhaps even on offense-defense substitutions late in games, but let’s not pretend he isn’t, by a good margin, the best floor leader available.
The good thing here: At least Isiah is keeping people accountable. It’s clear that no one on the team has carte blanche if Starbury doesn’t, and Thomas noted today that he’d taken Eddy Curry and Jamal Crawford to task as well. (Which is interesting, since, save for some obvious gaffes and Curry’s performance against the two Florida teams, I thought both had played well. Unlike, say, Q. Richardson). This represents a necessary evolutionary development in the team’s culture.
But let’s not kid ourselves about the who’s missing. If this isn’t solved soon, it’s a huge, huge hole.
In other news: RIP, Zach Randolph’s grandma. Although, if it had to happen, now’s a good time. Just grieve privately.
Objects in Mirror November 3, 2007
Posted by mb in eddy curry, zach randolph.add a comment
There’s a lot one could talk about today. Perhaps the most interesting thing would be Nate Robinson playing most of the minutes in crunch time after Stephon Marbury’s porous defense of Boobie Gibson allowed Cleveland to pull away, followed by Isiah Thomas hinting that Nate may play more minutes because he is, in some sense, a better player. But I don’t think that’s going to remain a story for very long, and by far the most important development last night is validation of everything I’d said about the possible effectiveness of a Zach Randolph-Eddy Curry frontcourt. There was no confusion (as there seemingly had been the entire preseason). There was no clogging of the lane, there was no case of “are there enough balls for both?” Curry was effective inside, Randolph was effective everywhere (his range astounds me), and there was enough left over for Jamal Crawford and Nate Robinson to have big games besides. Boobie killed us, but believe me when I say that if the Knicks play every game as they did last night’s, they’ll make the playoffs with ease.
Initial Disclosures: Zach Randolph August 22, 2007
Posted by mb in initial disclosures series, zach randolph.2 comments
From New York City, this is Rockin’ Steady.
1. Marion
This year, the Knicks made their mark on draft night by making what appeared to be a stunningly competent trade: Steve Francis and Channing Frye for Zach Randolph (give or take a spare part or two). The naysayers, unable to backpedal and abruptly shower Franchise or Frye with praise after years of contrary practice, instead opted to zero in on the following supposed knocks on Randolph:
1. Randolph is an evil “thug.”
2. Randolph and Eddy Curry are the exact same player, each useless without the ball, and thus the Knicks somehow managed to lose out here by acquiring a 20-10 man for a disgruntled and generally useless backcourt invalid and a “power” forward who looks and plays basketball like a version of me that had been subjected to the Mike Teavee treatment (the stretching afterwards, not the initial shrinking).
On the first topic, I had a bit of an interesting source of insight. A college acquaintance went to high school in Indiana with Randolph, and in fact tutored him in an attempt to get him to qualify to play NCAA basketball. I e-mailed Rob about our new acquisition, and it turned out he had already posted comments on the subject to Matt Yglesias’ political weblog. (Yglesias was also a college classmate, and the fact that he is now some sort of respected hero of the left wing blogosphere makes me giggle).
Rob had the following interesting things to say about Z:
I went to high school with Zach in Marion, IN (and then was in the same college class as Matthew Y., so I’m more snob than redneck klansman). I even tutored him a bit for the SAT. He came in with a 560 or something, and eventually scored 10 points below the NCAA cutoff of, I think, 820. He got a waiver to play at MSU–I think, because he had a learning disability that his mother was too proud to have formally diagnosed, and which would have nullified the cutoff anyway.
When I knew Zach, he was a very genial guy with little sense of self who just wanted to be liked. It’s strange to think of, for a guy of his size, but he would be what he thought others wanted to see. Which is a bad thing, when you’re in the kind of environment he grew up in–just google ‘Roger Randolph’ to see how his brother turned out. MSU and Izzo would have been great for him, except that he wasn’t anywhere near being prepared for college. The old Trail Blazers were about the worst situation he could have gone into.
His personality may have solidified by now (for the worse, apparently), but even if not, the Knicks don’t seem like a good situation for him, and neither does NYC.
Interesting, yes? There’s more:
When I tutored Zach, I was a Sr. and he was a Jr. We started with “negative times negative equals a positive,” which seemed pretty basic. Not even a glimmer of recognition. So we backed up a few more steps. For this, I got a couple indirect references in recruiting mags and eventually the Post… (“tutored by a Harvard-bound classmate”)
My mom is a speech therapist at an elementary school with several of Zach’s little nephews running around. Two of them are her students, and around major holidays, she hears about how Uncle Zach flies all of them to Portland and showers them with nice clothes, four-wheelers and pit bulls. She started to notice some inconsistencies in the stories, and figured out that one of the kids doesn’t actually get to go….evidently he’s only a second cousin or something. Poor kid.
So that’s something. Without sweating the details, Zach Randolph comes across as sympathetic and vulnerable. Which we all are, I guess, if you look closely enough.
What not all of us are is capable of putting up 25 and 10 on a nightly basis. This includes Eddy Curry. Observe:
The difference is in every one of those highlights that did not take place entirely within 7 feet of the basket (and in Z-Bo’s passing ability as well).
Moreover, I fail to understand why redundant effective scorers is such a bad thing. Curry crumpled some down the stretch because defenses collapsed on him in the paint. They won’t collapse quite so easily if he’s got a twin down there. And yes, neither of them play standout defense, but the +/- definitely works out in Randolph’s favor despite this. And even if they’re both defensive negatives… well, Rob’s already informed us what a negative times a negative equals, right?
My only misgiving about this trade is how it may effect David Lee. I’ll address this in another post.
2. ConfusingHoop.
Not long ago, the terrific TrueHoop posted an item that read as follows:
No one doubts that Zach Randolph can play basketball. But some say he’s a problem off the court, and he has had his run-ins. Is he a problem off the court? See for yourself.
What Henry Abbott was trying to say with that link, I understand, was that one could go to Z-Bo’s welcome party and observe his behavior firsthand–not that having a friend with a myspace page made Randolph trouble with a capital T. Well, so far, I’ve heard of no fallout from said party. My rose-colored view of the 2007-08 Knicks in this nascent stage makes me think that the party looked something like this.
It’s fun to dream.
