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Those other guys could at least point to heaps of free throws or solid assist numbers. Only three players in league history have used more than 30 percent of their team’s possessions while shooting below 40 percent: Jerry Stackhouse, Baron Davis, and Allen Iverson (twice). That is a historically rare combination of shot chucking and brick laying. He’s also shooting 38.8 percent for the season. He used 30 percent of Toronto’s possessions with a shot, turnover, or drawn foul - a gargantuan usage rate reserved for the league’s biggest scoring stars. The current version of Gay is basically a harmful player. Dwane Casey, the team’s head coach, may also be in trouble, depending on Ujiri’s timetable with the position, per several league sources. And that’s why we should expect the Raptors to begin (or continue) gauging the market for both DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry as we approach December 15, after which most free agents who signed over the summer are trade-eligible again. Here’s the thing: This deal, by itself, may well make the 2013-14 Raptors better.
#TORONTO RAPTORS RUDY GAY TRADE FULL#
This is about Toronto sloughing off Gay’s endless barrage of midrange bricks and beginning a full teardown - with the potential for a top-five pick in this draft, max-level cap space this summer, and similar space every summer going forward. This is not about Patrick Patterson, or Greivis Vasquez, the league’s second-leading assist man last season. But don’t be fooled: This is a salary dump. If you’re even a medium-level NBA fan, you probably know the names of all four players going to Toronto. The Williams swap and DeMarcus Cousins max-level extension left Sacramento without meaningful projected cap room this summer, putting the Kings in a position where they could plausibly look at Gay’s $19 million player option for 2014-15 and say, “No harm, no foul.” The Raptors were betting Gay would pick up that option given his poor play this season, and dealing Gay allows them to plan with more certainty.Īnd so here we are: The last remaining Rudy Gay suitor has agreed to send four rotation players to Toronto in exchange for Gay and (very tall) salary filler. The Kings’ wing rotation is a disaster, even after the recent acquisition of Derrick Williams, who has never resembled an NBA-caliber small forward. Only one team was left: the Kings, with a new ownership group determined to make a splash and a new GM, Pete D’Alessandro, who worked with Toronto GM Masai Ujiri in Denver.
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I know GMs who say they wouldn’t touch him now in free agency for the midlevel exception. This is how far Gay’s value has declined league-wide over the last 18 months. They went to every team that made at least some theoretical sense: Detroit, with expiring contracts and at least some need on the wing Milwaukee, with fading postseason ambitions and a massive hole at small forward the Greek Freak isn’t quite ready to fill Cleveland, with a playoff mandate, a GM on shaky ground, and perhaps the worst group of starting wing players in the league and many others.Įveryone said no, and they did so abruptly. The Raptors canvassed damn near the entire league in their quest to become the second team in two seasons to dump Rudy Gay well in advance of the trade deadline, according to sources across the NBA.