Why Zach Randolph doesn't matter

The Portland Trail Blazers have been one of the NBA's perennially awful teams during the past decade. Everyone pretty much knows it, but what's worse is that everyone in Portland believes it. The Blazers fan base has dropped considerably, and the organization hasn't seemed to care, showing no signs of drastic change. But the inaction isn't the only thing killing us, because what they have done hasn't been so great either, what with the consistently bad trades, the terrible draft picks, and countless other bad decisions. So who can blame the fans? Aside from making the playoff in 2003 and this past year's draft, we really haven't had anything to be excited about in a long time.

So give us something to get excited about! I suggest a trade. A trade of Zach Randolph. Why should we trade our leading scorer you ask? Because he doesn't matter. I know that seems hard to believe, but I honestly believe that we would be as good, if not better, without him. Here's why:

Randolph is entering his 6th year in the league, all of which have been with the Blazers. First of all, he came into the organization at a pretty bad time. 2001 was about the time the term "Jailblazers" was starting to stick. That label wasn't his fault, but he sure hasn't done anything to remedy it, being arrested multiple times, being accused of rape this year, and all the weed and gun problems that seems to plague anyone who plays here. This (literally) illustrates his, um, problem:




















Anyways, back to why he doesn't matter. I've been doing some looking around on ESPN and everything, trying to find patterns in his play that dictate how the team does. Originally, I have to admit, I was a little biased looking for stuff that showed that he hindered the team. Stuff like "whenever he scores 40 or more, we lose." Stuff that I could say "This is why he should be traded." But after looking, I realized, it really doesn't matter if he scores or not, plays or not, the team's play is not at all influenced by his play.

First of all, Zach is averaging 24 points a game this season, and the only other year he averaged 20+ per game was the 03-04 season, a season we had our first non-winning season in 14 years, going 41-41. It was also the first year we didn't make the playoffs in 21 years. All in Zach's best year to date. We haven't had a winning record since, and as of right now, we haven't had a winning month in 14 straight months. Sad thing is we're only 1 win away from tying the amount of wins we had last season, 21. (We're 20-30 right now).

This season, it really hasn't mattered what he's done. In games when he scores 30 or more we're 6-6. The one game he didn't play in we won. And there's generally no correlation between his scoring and our winning. When he puts out way less than usual, then we see a drop. When he plays less than 30 minutes, we lose. When he scores less than 15, we generally lose. But I think that has a lot to do with him being on the court and taking the same amount of shots and just missing. There was absolutely nothing that led me to believe we cannot get rid of him though.

The one reason why I do think he's detrimental is just that though: he takes too many shots. He never creates shots for others, with an average of about 1 assist per game, so when he's missing shots, we have to work a lot harder to win games.

In my opinion, the Blazers should do something that really gets Blazer fans excited again, and that means TRADE ZACH RANDOLPH. Seriously, trade him. What better gift to get Portlander's for Valentine's Day? Trade him.