Watching the Knicks/StolenSonics game not too long ago I was mesmerized by Zach Randolph. At the time I described his play as reminding me of "the Halloween episode of the Simpsons when Homer has all the clones to help him around the house and office. There were baby-faced and baby-fatted Zach Randolphs everywhere." Z-Bo scored 29 points and grabbed 19 rebounds that night. I was planning on unraveling this Z-Bo mystery over the course of the season. But, Randolph's been traded. And, he's still inscrutably effective, scoring 27 points and hauling in 10 rebounds last night for the Clippers.
After much deliberation, I don't think that modern science can yet explain Zach Randolph. He is the basketball equivalent of dark matter. We have observational evidence that allows us to infer what each is capable of but we can't really, really bottle it up or explain what/why it is the way it is. I've spent entire games just watching him and it's uncanny (and bizarre on my part). He manages to be everywhere important on the floor without ever appearing to move with urgency or purpose. Each single act of his looks lumbering and aimless but taken together they somehow add up to Voltron. In spite of the
way he moves and all empirical evidence, Randolph is somehow more likely than almost anyone else in the Association right now (other than, maybe, Amare, Garnett, Al Jefferson and Dwight Howard) to end up with 26 and 17 on any given night. I'm utterly confounded and now he's gone. I guess I'll have to turn my attention to the way in which Cutino Mobley's enlarged heart combines with Tim Thomas's lack of heart to balance them both out and keep them alive. It was no coincidence that they were traded together...
[Ed note: many of these thoughts are culled from my answers to questions posed by Sean Meagher, who blogs about the Blazers.]
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