Remind me what we got for Zach Randolph.

They don't, though. The results show that Roy, Aldridge and, later, Oden and Batum upgraded the team talent a lot, which led to more wins. Since Randolph wasn't part of acquiring any of those players, the "results," in terms of wins, don't appear connected to that trade.

 

If young athletes weren't impressionable, then I don't think you'd see teams fretting over locker room cancers mearly as often as they seem to.

 

Without Oden and Batum, the following season, with no other majo0r roster moves, the team improved by 9 games over the previous season. It's easy to attribute that to normal growth by youth, but that normal growth should be canceled out by losing the team's primary offensive threat. How does a team lose a 20-10 player, make no other significant mvoes, and improve by 9 games?

 

Two things: One is that I think teams fret over "locker room cancers" a lot less than fans do. It's extremely rare for a truly productive player to be shipped due to personality. It's most often when a player's ability slips. Having a bad personality may make the player an easier decision to drop, but is rarely a main motivating force, in my view. Second, to the extent that teams do "fret," they do so even on veteran teams.

I'm not saying a disruptive personality can't have an adverse effect on a team...I'm saying that I think it's overstating things by a lot to suggest that Randolph would have "corrupted" younger players on the team.

 

uhh..the Growth of Brandon Freakin' Roy? went from simple rookie of the year into an all-star and top player in the league.

 

He did play with both Roy and Aldridge a full year, though (06-07). http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2007.html

Take a look at the Advanced stats. Zach had a fantastic year, well above 20 PER, scoring 24 and pulling down 10 boards, with two supporting pieces in LMA and Roy, and Outlaw playing his normal game. They won 32 games.

Now look at 2008: http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2008.html

Nobody in the regular rotation has over 20 PER, and only 3 regular rotation guys have a PER over 15. This team looks worse than 2007's team without Zach to carry them. But they win 9 more games than 2007. Their Offensive Ranking jumps from 20th to 14th, and their Defensive Ranking jumps from 26th to 17th.

What changed? Steve Blake was added; James Jones was added; Joel Przybilla played more games; Zach was subtracted. Which of those four changes do you think had the largest impact on our offense and defense?

 

Roy and Aldridge not only improved, they played a lot more the following season. But, still, I agree that you make a good point. It is surprising, to me. Not enough to convince me that Randolph is useless to winning games, but certainly something I'll consider.

 

Yet the growth of someone like Durant on OKC only netted their team 3 wins from year to year, with a few roster moves. I think normally, a jump like Brandon had could easily help a team improve by 8-10 wins. However, losing your top player from the previous season for nothing would likely, if he had a positive effect on the team, cost that same team 5-10 wins. The imrpovement of Brandon should have, with hsi positive effects, been negated by the loss of Zach, if it wasn't an addition by subtraction.

 

wasn't Pryzbilla injured like 1/2 that season as well?

Your primary other options on the team were two NBA rookies and Travis Outlaw.

It was a team in the middle of being blown up, not tinkered with. You can't make accurate trends on teams while they are blowing the rosters up and rebuilding.

 

He may or may not have. I'm not certain. But... We really weren't in the position to find out.

I just know that 3 pretty awful NBA teams, that could have used numbers like he puts up, fucked him off.

 

You mean 3 awfully-run NBA teams.

 

In the middle of being blown up. Fine, then it should look bad. But the following year, they get rid fo the top scorer off of that team, wouldn't that still be in the process of blowing it up? You take a rebuilding team, and remove the top player statistically on that team, generally, you're going to see the team slip, no? Instead, they improved by 9 games! That doesn't happen so easily for other top players in the game. Look at the difference in Utah between Deron's 1st and 2nd year. 1st year he only played half the time, had an ok rookie season, they win 41 games. He plays pretty good his second season AND they have a healthy Boozer, and they improve by 10 games. So the addition of full time Deron and a healthy Boozer is roughly the equivalent of the jump Roy made between year 1 and 2? No chance. Roy made a bigger leap between year's 2 and 3. I already mentioned Durant. He should have saw the same leap in his team, since they didn't get rid of anyone significant, least of all a 20-10 player. But no similar jump in wins. You just don't see that sort of improvement off of a team that loses a player like that normally.

 

It's also ammusing to me that both LA and NY improved their win totals the year after Zach left. Maybe it's pure coincidence. Maybe Eric Gordon and Wilson Chandler experienced the same huge jumps in their game that Roy did in between years 1 and 2. I dunno. But if Memphis gets rid of Z-Bo this offseason, they're in line for close to 50 wins next season, so watch out.

 

If you're blown up, you've already reached the bottom. Success came due to the emergence of Brandon Roy as a legitimate NBA Allstar, not because we dumped Zach Randolph. You're taking different situations and making casual conclusions without looking at the big picture.

 

But the full blow up didn't happen until we got rid of Zach. You can't say we were blown up, and THEN trade off your 20-10 contributor. We finished blowing it up that offseason by getting rid of Zach. That should have been us hitting bottom. But instead, we actually improved once he was gone. The full house cleaning should have brought an even worse record than the previous season.

In the last 10 years, there have been 113 indvidual seasons of a guy putting up 20 points and 10 rebounds. You can go ahead and look to see how many guys have been traded the year after doing that. Not many. The list gets REALLY small when you see who was not on the team the following season, adn saw their team improve by 9 or more games.

 

When John Nash declared Zach our Franchise Player, the Cornerstone we were going to build around I hit the roof.

Stupid.

I was also against the extension given to Zach. I posted at the time, "call the agent's bluff".

Again, at the time of the Zach trade, I did not like it.

That is not the same as wanting Zach to be here to this day. Not sure why some posters in this thread make that assumption of those who disliked the Zach trade.

Folks the Zach trade was a LONG time ago. Why the heck would you assume someone against the trade that actually occured 1) Want Zach on this team right now; and 2) were against any trades of Zach.

 

Where are you guys getting the idea that anybody actually wanted this guy and his miserable contract? We got the dumbest team in the league to take his contract and looked how it worked out for them...When you build a terrible reputation as Zach did, teams don't want you. Period. We did what we had to to get rid of the guy. Stop with all the theoretical bullshit and assuming we could have traded for X, Y and Z.....He wasn't a guy that people wanted. Jesus.

 

What emergence as a player? He's basically the same player now he was when he was here. He didn't emerge as a player to suddenly change his value.

 

...and yet, he was traded twice more. He was a desired commodity, and still is. We got rid of him to extinguish the JailBlazers image, pure and simple. The trade accomplished that goal, but some of us wanted more than that.