Memphis Grizzlies: Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol The NBA’s Best Big Man Combination
As of right now, Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph are the top big-man tandem in the game. A few years ago, the previous sentence would have been laughed at, but today, it’s hard to put another group ahead of the Memphis Grizzlies duo.
Zach Randolph teams with Marc Gasol for the best 1-2 big man combo in the NBA. (NBA.com photo)
Randolph and Gasol are both extremely skilled, but play different games. Randolph, who has reinvented himself since coming to Memphis in 2009, is a dominant scorer despite his lack of leaping ability. He is one of the toughest players in the league to guard (Tim Duncan begs to differ) and officiate, as the burly, 6’9” ex-Spartan is constantly battling for position on the block. He has a soft touch from the outside and has a great basketball IQ, something his game lacked early in his career.
Gasol does his best work at the elbow. He is a very good shooter from up to 20 feet and is crafty with his release, using up-fakes and fade-away jumpers to create space for himself. Pau’s younger brother was the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year last season, an award usually given to big men with high block and rebounding numbers (Gasol was 12th in blocks and 23rd in rebounds), which shows how impressive Gasol on the other end of the court. Gasol is definitely one of the most skilled big men in the league, as he possesses guard-like floor vision and passing ability, which apparently just runs in the family.
Together, Gasol and Randolph make Memphis go. Mike Conley is a solid starter and the definition of a floor general, but he’s no offensive wizard. Tony Allen and Tayshaun Prince are below average offensive talents, both incapable of beating their own man and creating defensive movement off the dribble on any kind of a consistent basis. Therefore, Gasol and Randolph are left with a lot of the duties that 2s and 3s are responsible for on the average NBA team. Memphis has one of the tightest and most cohesive offensive groups, which allows them to pull out games down the stretch despite their lack of offensive options.
After Gasol and Randolph, the next best big man duo has to be David West and Roy Hibbert. West, one of the more underrated players in the game, has averaged 16 points and seven rebounds a game for his career and has to be one of the toughest players in the game today. He’s the kind of grind-it-out power forward that teams would love to have. He can score from the post and has a very good face-up game, while being able to score within the confines of an offensive, as opposed to guys who need to get plays called for them to succeed. Hibbert is far less of a contributor, but possesses the skills to take over when need be (although the Pacers would like to see more dominance from their center). The former Georgetown star may seem lost offensively at times, but he’s become a top-five defensive center, resulting in a career-high 2.6 blocks per game last season. Whether Hibbert and West are good enough to help Indiana win a title next season is up in the air (I don’t think it’s going to happen), but that doesn’t take away from their abilities.
The next big man crew on the list is up in the air. After this season, we’ll have a better idea whether Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic can play together effectively and it wouldn’t be a shocker if the two of them emerged as a top-tier group. As of right now, it would be hard to put Minnesota’s bigs at the top of this list, but it wouldn’t be surprising if they found themselves firmly in the conversation by mid-season. The two can rebound at an impressive clip (Love led the league in 2010-11 with 15.2 per game and Pekovic averaged 8.8 last season) and if they’re both healthy, they’ll pose problems to opposing defenses due to their inside-out capabilities (although Love can play inside as well as shoot from distance).
There’s no telling what the next couple years might bring, but for right now, Randolph and Gasol are the top big man tandem and everyone else is fighting for second best. With Randolph already 32 years old, there’s no telling how long Memphis’ backbone can keep this up, but four years ago, no one would have ever seen this coming. This is why we watch the basketball, right?