Trading Z-Bo to the Knicks

Knicks Can't Unload Randolph
Kevin Pritchard said last year that when he traded Zach that really was the best he could do. IIRC -- we traded Randolph, Dickau and Freddy Jones for basically Frye and a trade exception that allowed us to acquire James Jones and Rudy Fernandez. KP was slaughtered for that deal by many. I have to say I was very disappointed at the time of the trade. I think Ed O in particular thought it was a bad deal at the time. Was that really the best we could do? If the above link is any indication, it was great that KP was able to get out from under Z-bo's contract when he did. It looks like Z-Bo has the plague or something and no one wants to touch him with a stick. The trade opened up time for LMA, allowed us to get Rudy Fernandez and helped change the image of the franchise. Does KP have like a psychic friend or something? : pritchslap :

 

He definitely knows what he's doing. He may not win GM of the year because he doesn't pull off big name trades like Ainge did last year, but he'll be considered the GM of the decade once we start terrorizing the league.

 

In pure numbers potential, I agree; Zach could have produced better here than he did in NY, and we likely would have enjoyed a high-scoring presence without Oden around. However, we turned Aldridge into a good starting PF, and turned Zach (who would never have played off the bench without grousing) into a decent bench PF (Channing Frye). From a number standpoint, we lost, but from a "right piece for the right place" standpoint, I think we won, or at least broke even (after losing Jones).

I want to thank ABM for having a unique username.

 

I was really down on the trade at the time, but getting Rudy has made it more than worthwhile.

Ed may have a point about buying that pick (as we have bought similar picks in the past), but it's a little like speculating that we could've had Aldridge anyway without giving up Khryapa. It may be true, but can you say that for certain? I'll take the 100% certainty that we got Rudy (and Frye) by giving up Randolph over the probability, even if it's over 80%, that we could have got Rudy some other way.

BTW--Somebody is going to get Randolph and it's going to be a real bargain in value (although not in salary). He's a lot like Ron Artest--you may not want him on your team, but he's the first or second guy you talk about when your team plays his.

 

Fair comments -- Jones was a rental and we may not do much with the cap space (that remains to be seen), but I think chemistry alone we are better off without Zach. We have more flexibility and it is just kind of funny to me how low Z-bo's value is. I imagine for chemistry reasons they were bound and determined to move Zach. They didn't inherit any anchoring contracts (Francis's deal was a few years shorter). Given how hard of a time that the Knicks are having moving Zach, I say it was a decent deal looking back a year later and it was probably the best they could do. It is a deal that looks a lot better now than it did back then.

 

I always thought KP got a great deal and that the Knicks gave up too much for such a losing sack of shit. The Blazers needed to expunge him from the team for the sake of both the locker room and the fan base

The best part about the trade though was the absolutely hilarious pairing of ZBo and Eddy. I can't remember a more unintentionally hilarious PF/C combo.

 

I'll admit that I was less than thrilled with the deal when I first heard about it, but time has proved that KP knows way more about evaluating players than I do...and more than most GMs for that matter. I think Frye alone has more value than ZBo at this point.

 

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I thought is was great addition by subtraction. Regardless of how talented Zach was, he's a knucklehead who most likley never will play for a winner because he's too damn selfish and is only concerned about himself. A team he is on could go 55-0 and if he was on the bench he'd complain. This is the same guy that sucker punched Reuben Patterson after all.

 

Oh come on Ed! How can you think the team would have been better with Zach on it? You thought the Knicks would be better than us too! The deal opened up playing time for LaMarcus. That alone made it a good deal. We were going nowhere with the black hole known as Zach Randolph dominating the ball on this team. Getting a solid backup and team first guy in Frye was just a bonus to getting rid of Zach.

 

I honestly don't believe the team would have been better off with Zach for one year, than with Jones and Frye. Jones was a huge part of the team success--looking at the wins when he played v. when he didn't. Also, Frye was directly responsible for several wins (final Laker win being the best). I don't think Zach would have contributed to any more wins than those two did when you consider his lack of defense.

Without the trade you still likely get rid of Zach and have no more wins.

With the trade, you get roughly the same number of wins, you get to develop LMA more, and you get Frye--possibly a perfect backup PF. Maybe it helps you get Rudy too--no way to really know.

I really felt like KP dropped the ball at the time of the trade. Now, I think he is a genius.

 

I didn't (and don't) hate Zach and at the time of the deal it really raised my eyebrows; I kept thinking "That's it? That's the best we could do?" But the fact remains that by moving Zach, LaMarcus was able to become a full time starter and he nearly reproduced everything that Zach gave us on the offensive end (granted it took him a good half of the season to become comfortable off the block), but there's one thing Aldridge provided that Zach never did (or will) and that's defense. LMA turned out to be a pretty decent perimeter defender and a decent weak side shot blocker.

The other major change I saw in last year's team was more ball movement; guys were making the effort to make the extra pass and find the open man, when Zach was on the court and he received a pass you could almost guarantee that he was going to shoot, and it really didn't matter if his was going to be the best shot, or if there were two guys draped over him, he wanted to get his.

And I think we're forgetting that the Zach deal was at least partially predicated on the decision to draft Greg Oden instead of Kevin Durant. Had Greg been healthy last year we would have seen he and LaMarcus paired up in the front court instead of seeing guys like Channing and LMA forced to pick up minutes at the 5 because Joel is such an offensive liability.

In any case I think it's clear that we have a better team minus Zach, and I would hope that we can all just be happy about that and count our blessings that we're not Knicks fans.

 

Well, at least you admitted you were wrong.

 

Count me as one disappointed with what we received in value from Zach. I felt if we were trading him for cap space, we needed to also include Miles for Malik Rose (whose contract expires at the end of this year). I would have also been satisfied if the #23 pick were included so we didn't have to deal with Phoenix. I don't know if would have been possible, but I would have been willing to pick up Miles' salary in the following manner:

Trade 1:

Zach + Dickau + $3MM for Channing and Francis.

Trade 2:

Miles + $3MM for Malik Rose.

Trade 3:

$3MM + some 2nd round picks for the #23 pick.

That $9MM almost covers Darius' extra year of salary in 2009-1010 (and certainly viewed via NPV). Also, the Knicks are looking at cap space in 2010 while we're looking at 2009, so it shouldn't have mattered to them.

Zach has been vilified by both the fan base and management. Did he have major holes in his game? Of course, Did he not always have the best attitude? Absolutely. However, I've talked to enough people in the organization to arrive at the conclusion that Zach was neither hated nor considered a team cancer. I understand why so much bad stuff has been said about him--we were getting the short end of the talent stick and management had to make the fan base feel better.

Zach was never my favorite guy on or off the court. I tend to prefer players who have overall games on the court and who act like Boy Scouts off of it. That being said, we hadn't had so little talent when he was the #1 option since our inaugural season. Zach was the guy who took the brunt of the blame for our losing, but the guy showed up and played hard on 47 feet every night. AFTER he got his big contract, he worked his ass off to come back from microfracture. I'll never pine for Zach on the Blazers, but I won't pretend as if he had zero value either.

 

in the deal proposed between the grizz and knicks, i have heard that the grizz are holding out, trying to force the knicks to pay some of zbo's salary. since when can you do that? if that was the case, we could have done that when we traded zbo in the first place?

 

Had the Blazers not traded Z-Bo what might have happened last season?

LaMarcus, Travis and Joel play reduced minutes.

LaMarcus is not the main offensive option for the team, marginalizing his impact on the team.

Travis maybe isn't force fed shots on the second unit.

James Jones is not on the team.

Channing Frye is not on the team.

Win Shares for 2007-2008 season:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2008.html
LaMarcus: 5.9 (reduced if Zach on team)
Joel: 4.1 (reduced if Zach on team)
Travis: 3.1 (reduce? if Zach on team, or gets some of Jones minutes, wasn't as productive as Jones)
Jones: 3.5 (eliminate if Zach on team)
Frye: 3.0 (eliminate if Zach on team)

Zach: 2.9
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/NYK/2008.html
Of course, Zach was on a real bad team, reducing chances to amass Win Shares. Yet even a team that won hardly any games, David Lee got 7.3 Win Shares!

It seems that Zach had a bad season on a bad team, and for whatever reason(s) the Blazers didn't miss him much.

 

The question to me is whether Nate would have decided to play Aldridge a significant number of minutes had Randolph been on the team. If he had, then Aldridge gets his development and helps the team win as much, leaving Randolph to basically suck up the minutes Frye played. I think Randolph is definitely a more valuable player than Frye, and would have made the second unit much more dangerous (imagine backups trying to contain Randolph on the inside and Outlaw on the perimeter).

My guess is that McMillan would have fairly quickly made that determination to play Aldridge as the starter, because Aldridge seems much more McMillan's type of player than does Randolph. But it is just speculation.

As I said the last time this came up, if that cap space gets used (either in trade or in the next off-season), I'll think it was an excellent trade. If it doesn't, I'll think it was a poor trade (but nothing disastrous).