With Gay there to take the late-clock burden out of Wall and Beal's hands, those two could develop more organically and without as much pressure.Īnd.
#Rudy gay wizards free
His contract stinks, of course, but the Wizards also clearly aren't signing anyone in free agency that would be better than Gay. Gay could have been the bridge semi-star that takes those difficult shots until Wall and Beal are ready to assume that role. So, given that, it's at least worth asking if a player like Gay has more value to a team like the Wizards than he does for Memphis or Toronto. Both are very young and have the ability to improve those skills, but until they do, the Wizards' half-court offense will have issues. Wall's jumper is too broken, while Beal's isolation game still needs a lot of development. At this point, Wall and Beal are not the right people to bail the Wizards out of those situations. The players run their sets with a purpose, but their lack of talent means they always end up in late-clock situations. As we know, the Wizards' half-court offense is a wreck. But the point still at least made me think about whether the Wizards could have used Gay more than the Raptors, who actually have a decent offense. The obvious counter is that a team can lessen the number of times they shoot with the clock nearing zero with better spacing and pace, both of which are problems when Gay is your small forward. If he's not there, someone else has to take that bad shot and their efficiency gets worse. Removing Rudy Gay from this play wouldn't prevent this contested 2 point shot from happening. When Rudy Gay takes one of these shots, converted at a poor efficiency, his shooting % is taking the weight for the failure of the team's offense as a whole.
Teams don't WANT to take the worst shot in basketball, contested 2 pointers, but they have to when the shot clock is nearing 0 and they have no better shot to take. The problem with assigning him blame for the latter, is that many bad shots are a result of the team's imperfection. The question however, is how responsible Gay is for his good shots and how responsible he is for his bad shots. The blog " A Substitute of War" writes that the problem with analyzing Gay's shooting efficiency is that he's always the one that has to take the shots late in the shot clock under duress, which naturally will drag down his efficiency. It's just a way to illustrate Gay's issues this season.īut I was struck by one analysis of the trade that suggested Memphis made a big mistake dealing Gay. This isn't to say Crawford is better, because the two occupy different roles for a different quality of teams. By contrast, Jordan Crawford, who many don't like here, is averaging 18.4 points per 36 minutes with a PER of 15.5 and a true shooting percentage of 51.8.
This season he's scoring less than 17 points per 36 minutes with a PER of 14.3 and a true shooting percentage of 47.8. Gay makes a lot of money and really isn't that good of a player. The Grizzlies ultimately settled on a cheaper small forward and a young prospect that's better than any young prospect the Wizards could have offered outside of John Wall and Bradley Beal, both of whom obviously weren't going anywhere.Ĭonventional wisdom suggests the Wizards dodged a bullet here. Instead, he's heading to Toronto for Tayshaun Prince and Ed Davis. By now, you know that the Washington Wizards didn't end up getting Rudy Gay in a trade.