Gay a fit for Kings, implausibly

Shooting better from floor for efficient offence

Rudy Gay was welcomed to Sacramento with the same greeting from the basketball intelligentsia that he received in Toronto. Nobody understood how Gay, a player who has needed the ball in his hands to succeed during his career, was going to get along with DeMarcus Cousins and Isaiah Thomas, who can also dominate possession. In Toronto, the issue was with Gay and DeMar DeRozan.

With the Raptors, the experiment was a failure. Occasionally, both DeRozan and Gay got their numbers, but the Raptors were a mediocre team. They became better when he left.

In Sacramento, the narrative is not quite so simple. The Kings are just 16-25 since Gay played his first game, and remain near the bottom of the loaded Western Conference. However, the Kings’ offence is actually quite good, 11th in the league in points per possession since the trade. Both Cousins and Thomas continue to get their numbers. As importantly, Gay, a 41% shooter during his 51 games in Toronto, is shooting 50% from the floor for the Kings while getting to the free-throw line more often than he did in Toronto.

Imagine that: the poster boy for empty-calorie scoring has been kind of brilliant in Sacramento.

“I was inefficient when I was here,” Gay said in the Raptors’ practice gym on Thursday afternoon. “I’m not anymore. I was when I was here.”

The Kings play in Toronto for the first time since the trade on Friday, and landing on the reasoning for Gay’s statement of fact remains elusive. His usage rate — the percentage of possessions he ends with a field-goal attempt, freethrow attempts or turnovers — is down from 30.7% this season in Toronto to 26.5%. However, that is still a higher rate than his days in Memphis, and this is as efficient as he has ever been.

He is taking 16.1 field goal attempts per 36 minutes here versus 18.9 in Toronto. Again, a notable drop, but he has shot less before, too. He is shooting far better in the paint with the Kings than he did with the Raptors. That seems inexplicable.

“We didn’t look at Rudy just, as I call him, Rudy the Raptor,” Kings coach Mike Malone said. “We looked at Rudy and his complete body of work. If you go back to his time in Memphis when he had the luxury of playing with a very talented frontcourt in Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, and he … was much more efficient with that lineup.”

So, is that all that was missing in Toronto — a low-post scoring threat to take the pressure off of Gay and DeRozan? Maybe, although part of the reason Gay was not happy in Memphis was because he felt stunted with the Grizzlies. He got here, and he was given what he asked for.

“He was put in a tough situation where he was looked on to be the saviour,” said Raptors coach Dwane Casey.

“He’s a dynamic player, a big-time talent. He was brought here for the right reasons. It ended up turning into something that wasn’t meant to be.”

It is easy to nitpick there. When the Raptors traded for Gay, Bryan Colangelo was facing his own expiring deal. That Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment allowed him to make a trade that added future salary commitments without knowing whether or not they would retain Colangelo lets you know how far away ownership was from a plan at the time. Other than a half-season, the Raptors did not lose a lot by trading for Gay — Jose Calderon was a free agent and Ed Davis is entering restricted free agency

We looked at Rudy and his complete body of work

this season. However, they did lose some financial flexibility in the short-term.

It was a risk Colangelo correctly felt he had to take. If he did not swing, he was going to strike out looking. That does not mean Gay gets off the hook entirely, though, as a player who tried his best and merely did not fit. In Toronto, he repeatedly said his role on the team was to score. However, he did not exactly make adjustments when wins did not come.

Nonetheless, everything seems to have worked out. The Raptors are heading to the playoffs, and Gay is flourishing. That makes the deal a success for both teams.

“We don’t know if that would have happened if I were [in Toronto], too,” Gay said. “It happened early in the season. Nobody knows.”

Gay fits in well in Sacramento. In some ways, though, he remains stubborn.