The Real Infinite Sadness

If you thought overpaying David Lee was bad, the Grizzlies have reportedly traded Quentin Richardson for Zach Randolph. It's not official yet, but generally when a trade is broken to a major publication, it's official. Can I get a moment of silence for any good karma the Grizzlies built with signing and drafting respectable, level-headed free agents in the past?

Randolph, affectionately known as Zbo to those in the NBA know, is a high-scoring power forward who also does his fair share of rebounding work. He is certainly a legitimate NBA starter, but fancies himself a superstar, taking terrible shots to continue to pad his impressive stats. Zbo plays best in the half court offense, though he did fit well in D'Antoni's version of SSOL for the Knicks early last season. He normally shoots around 47% from the field on his career, which is low for a power forward, though he shoots an acceptable 77% from the line. While this seems like an acceptable way to acquire 20+ ppg and 10 rpg, the metrics begin to show why Randolph has such a bad rap around the league.

Despite average good stats, his PER is a relatively low 19.3 on his career. This is partly because of his abhorrently low steal % and block %. Randolph's Offensive Rating is an acceptable 105, but his Defensive Rating is a very poor 110. In other words, he gives up about 5 more points per 100 possessions than he scores. In comparison Marc Gasol had a 112 OR and 108 DR. Randolph's True Shooting % and Effective FG% are also both low at 53% and 49%, respectively. In comparison Marc Gasol's TS% was 59% and his EFG% was 53%. To you non-statheads out there, basically Randolph doesn't have the efficiency of even a middling NBA quality big man. This is primarily because Randolph takes 58% of his shots as jumpers at a 40% clip. Not a good thing, especially when 33% of your attempts are in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock.

And all this for the very low price of $33.3 million over the next two seasons! Rest assured there will be plenty more Zbo hate on the way tomorrow!