Z-Bo coming off the bench as the sixth man for the Grizzles.
I love Zach Randolph.
Many years ago, so long ago that the WWW didn't exist then it was done on Usenet, a friend ran an annual NBA mock draft contest. People would be GM's and make picks and explain why and it all got posted pick by pick. That year I was the Warriors Gm and I picked Zach Randolph and got absolutely SLAMMED for doing it. Not just the friend who ran the draft but tons of Warriors fans etc were emailing me telling me how stupid I was and I should have picked Desagna Diop(sp).
To this day it makes me happy to see what a long career Randolph had, virtually everyone I was "supposed" to pick that year sucks in comparison.
http://www.ibiblio.org/craig/draft/2001_draft/compare.shtml
note I picked him 5th over Jason Richardson who the Warriors really picked that year and who has had a nice career but almost always on bad teams where Z Bo has been part of a good team for quite awhile since he matured off the court.
In hindsight Pau Gasol would have been a better pick probably the NBA got that right but this was way back when foreign guys were complete unknowns to most people. Joe Johnson was a better pick too but I felt the Warriors needed bigs. If you read my whole explanation
http://www.ibiblio.org/craig/draft/2001_draft/Picks/5_golden_state.shtml
I actually correctly said they might pick Richardson, I thought Joe Johnson had a chance to be a better player because he was a better shooter but I expected the Warriors would and probably should go big. They took Richardson who was exciting but always a volume shooter kind of guy.
Hard to say who had a better career but I would go for Z Bo because he was a key guy on good teams, Richardson really never was.