LJ4ptplay
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Can anybody here stand to see another year with a Curry and Zach frontcourt? It's very possible.
Z-Bo may have to hang another season
The opportunity was there, though it was through a small window. The Clippers needed to quickly recover from the loss of Elton Brand and Mike Dunleavy had a little chat with his old friend Donnie Walsh.
The details get a little blurry from here. Originally the whispers were that Walsh wanted a second-round pick for Randolph; essentially a salary dump, which the Clippers, with plenty of cap space, could do. But the Clips wanted a little more in the deal, perhaps a first-round pick and the Knicks had to take Brevin Knight's guaranteed contract.
This is usually a starting point in negotiations. But Walsh and the Clippers never got to Stage 2. The Denver Nuggets dangled Marcus Camby, a defensive player and cheaper contract, and gladly gave up the second-rounder.
It was back to the phones for Donnie, who is finding fewer and fewer teams with reasonable interest in Randolph, which is to say, willing to take him without sending an albatross of a contract, or two, back to New York.
Those days are over, Fixers. There was a time Isiah Thomas felt this was a necessary practice to get the type of players you wanted. The Garden money tree could handle bad contracts. Teams still believe if Walsh was desperate enough, he would eventually crack and do the same: My unwanted player for your unwanted contract.
Don't bet on it.
Randolph's value right now is very low for several reasons, mainly because he has three years and $48 million left on a max contract he should have never gotten from Paul Allen. The guy does put up consistent numbers that would make any fantasy basketball geek drool. But in the real world, Zach Randolph is not considered a building block. He's a risk. Milwaukee considered it and so did Denver, but neither pulled the trigger. The Clippers situation will hang over Donnie until Randolph is finally moved. With Utah getting the 2010 pick, you can't give up the 2009 choice or the 2011 choice. So where does that leave you? The 2012 pick?
There are very few reasonable destinations for Randolph at this point -- Memphis has cap space and a need for a low-post scorer, Detroit is looking to make changes and a ZBo-for-Sheed deal would work for both sides and who's to say the Clippers won't reconsider the younger, less injury-prone and better offensive choice in Randolph for Camby, once the trade moratorium lifts?
Admittedly, these are merely suggestions. Reality is that Walsh may have to pass on taking on contracts just to move Randolph and instead take him into the season, get him playing well and hope by the trade deadline there is interest once again in him.
I blogged this back in the spring that I heard the Knicks were close to moving Randolph to the Denver Nuggets right before the deadline. It wasn't a done deal, but it was very, very close. But a source with knowledge of the talks said while Glen Grunwald had handled most of the work, Isiah Thomas jumped in at the 11th hour and started tinkering with the deal. The Nuggets were already on the verge of civil war about the trade so Isiah's last-minute meddling caused the whole thing to shut down. The way it was told to me, Grunwald was frustrated.
But let's not even dare to assume the Knicks would have won that deal. In fact, I was told Isiah was tinkering because he was concerned with the public perception of the trade being a major loss for the Knicks, who almost certainly would have had to take Nene's contract as part of the deal. Linus Kleiza was the player the Knicks wanted, but I'm told he was off the table.
So you could see Zach and Eddy Curry once again as the frontcourt tandem at least in the first half of the season. As bad as that may sound, what you have to hope this season is that the head coach will put some time and effort into figuring out how to make it work with those two together. Isiah made that trade for Zach but then seemingly put no effort into strategy to get the most out of Zach and Eddy together. Randolph has a better-than-average mid-range game and he can rebound. He doesn't need to battle with Eddy for low-post time. He can be an effective pick-and-pop guy and high-post guy.
This isn't to say there's no way Randolph gets traded before or during training camp, but I think Fixer Nation needs to be prepared for the potential that Z-Bo goes through another season as a Knick. If he can put up his numbers and look good, his value will go up as his contract (at least the length of it) goes down.
The Clipper talks were a missed opportunity. But you don't want to make a bad decision just to cover up for it.
Stay tuned . . .
Posted by Alan Hahn on July 29, 2008 9:11 AM
