If not for the history of battery and stolen guns, Zach Randolph would be the most adorable player in the NBA. The only thing that looks softer than his doughy face and portly physique is his gentle touch around the hoop.
The beauty of Randolph is that he’s a series of contradictions. His grace and craft at the rim is matched only by the brutality and brawn he uses to get there. His clumsy, waddling gait belies his powerful physicality. His childlike smiles are every bit as captivating as his petrifying stares of death.
Randolph is beloved in the NBA almost as much as he’s feared. For most of his career he’s had the game of a selfish player, yet his teammates speak of him in such reverential tones that it sounds as though you’d be hard-pressed to find a more altruistic person to play basketball with.
Sport is often a fantasy that acts as a manifestation of reality. Off the court, Randolph is even more of an enigma. On one hand he’s become cherished in the Memphis community, the player in Grizzlies history who has resonated the most.
On the other hand, Randolph has been sued for sexual assault and been accused by the police of lying about information pertaining to a shooting. It’s almost too fitting that during the 2011 playoffs, when Randolph’s star truly ascended, a court date regarding drugs found in his vehicle loomed around the time the Grizzlies were eliminated.
But in a league with just as many cautionary tales as inspiring ones, Randolph has been able to fall into the latter category, against the odds.
In 2009, Randolph was an NBA non-entity. He was an empty calories stats guy, the NBA equivalent of the Big Mac, someone who put up big numbers and hurt his team in the process. You couldn’t win with Zach Randolph.
He was set to be the next Derrick Coleman or a poor man’s parallel to Shawn Kemp and Latrell Sprewell – someone that God gave all the talent in the world to, and most of the world’s naivety as well.
But when the Clippers traded Randolph to Memphis for Quentin Richardson, something changed. Maybe Tennessee connected with him. Maybe Memphis were just the perfect team. Or maybe the simple indignity of being traded for Quentin Richardson lit a fire under Randolph and taught him in no uncertain terms that he just had to be a better teammate. Whatever it was, the change was real, and with it Randolph made the Memphis Grizzlies real too, for the first time.
Every year the playoffs have an unlikely hero – someone who wasn’t supposed to steal the show but does it anyway. Last year it was a 37-year-old Paul Pierce not getting the memo that he was 37. The year before it was Damian Lillard, in his second season, fading to his left and hitting the sweetest, most iconic shot the NBA had seen since Ray Allen back-pedalling into the corner. In 2011 it was Zach Randolph.
That was the year that the NBA became the Association of Z-Bo for a fortnight. We giddily watched Randolph lead the eighth-seeded Grizzlies upset the number one seed San Antonio and then push the surging Thunder to seven games.
The traditional post-scoring power forward is a dying breed in the NBA, a dinosaur in the modern age. But in 2011, Randolph made the past look beautiful.
He killed the Spurs in the clinching game six of the first round, raining 31 points on them, 17 in the final term. He stepped back and hit those high arcing jump-shots that dropped through the net with a softness that only Dirk Nowitzki could touch. He bludgeoned his way to the hoop, a mix of craft and violence, throwing up shots that looked like they had no chance, but nevertheless glided into the hoop as though they were being drawn by a magnetic force.
Randolph was unstoppable that night, and in beating the Spurs, and giving Memphis fans their first ever playoff series victory, he gave an entire fan-base hope – a hope that had been until that point entirely foreign to them.
It was an unforgettable experience watching that game, and seeing, with every Randolph shot that found the net, a franchise find the belief for the first time that winning wasn’t just reserved for everyone else. Randolph’s redemption was Memphis’s redemption – perhaps that’s why they’ve been such a perfect match.
Watching this season’s Spurs-Grizzlies first round series, the one they played five years ago feels five decades in the past. This wasn’t a series – it was an elongated formality.
Marc Gasol and Mike Conley were on the shelf with serious injuries, and Courtney Lee, Tayshaun Prince and Rudy Gay had long since been traded – the most recognisable faces of this Memphis era of renaissance (or perhaps, rather, ‘birth’) were all absent, aside from Randolph and Tony Allen.
This Memphis team missed its real chance in 2013, when it came up against a Spurs team in the conference finals that was just much better than them. Randolph was exposed in that series, averaging only 11 points a game on 30 per cent shooting. He was taken advantage of on the defensive end too, with the Spurs targeting his slow footedness time and time again.
That series underlined the sad truth about Zach Randolph – if he’s your best player, or close to it, then you’re not a championship team. But the fact that that was even a discussion showed far Randolph had come.
Turning 35 in July, and with the Grizzlies potentially on the verge of a rebuild, we might have just watched Randolph’s last playoff game. He’s made the playoffs the past six years after going through a seven-year drought. It’s a testament to Randolph that we’re going to remember him for these six years, and not the ones that preceded them. And it won’t be recency bias – it will only be just.
Randolph’s game has eroded with age and he’s looking more and more like a dinosaur in Stephen Curry’s league. He doesn’t protect the rim or space the floor, and he can’t hold up defending the pick and roll. His best role in this league until he retires will likely be as a bench scorer, someone’s whose guile can monster opposing second units.
His usefulness hasn’t ceased yet though. There are still flashes of Z-Bo every now and then. Against the Spurs on Friday night he put up a 20-11 in 39 minutes, snagging five offensive boards.
The Best of Zach was playing in Tennessee, with his immaculate footwork and feathery touch allowing him to finish off what his power and force allowed him to start. He was even hitting from mid-range, a part of his game he’s largely abandoned, and for a few seconds here and there, with the uniforms the same, you could almost see 2011 again.
https://twitter.com/KatieMox/status/1780695947481174464 https://twitter.com/CWilliamson44/status/1780696642917994703
LeBron James is going back to the Olympics for the first time in 12 years. Steph Curry is headed to the games for the…
The only realistic threat to Boston’s chances of strolling through the Eastern Conference is a team that could still end up in the play-in…
Australian guards Dante Exum and Josh Giddey have both come up big for their NBA clubs in crucial wins in the lead-in to the…
Minnesota Timberwolves fans have endured plenty of pain in their 35 years of being a laughing stock in the NBA. In all that time,…
It’s a pretty good time to be a Tasmanian sports fan right now. After years in the sporting wilderness with not much to celebrate,…
