Gay’s legacy: Perfect Spur who never quite was
About a month into last November, the jersey fit so well it was as if Rudy Gay had been born to wear it.
The color scheme suited him as well as the game plan, and with every clever pass, every savvy cut and every stone-faced jumper, Gay looked more and more Spur-like. He had raised a few eyebrows when he decided to sign in San Antonio last summer, but it only took a few games to see there could not have been a much better match between franchise and player. What came next was not exactly historic, but that was not his fault. His personality was perfect for the locker room, and his skill set was perfect for the roster, but it turned out his timing was horrible.
Because of Kawhi Leonard’s quadriceps, Gay never got to settle in to the lineup configuration that would have given the Spurs an edge over every frontcourt in the Western Conference, and his own injury issues kept him from building on that early-season momentum.
So on Monday, when word came down that Gay has decided to opt out of the second year of his contract here, it’s worth remembering his legacy:
The most perfect
Spur who never quite was.
To be sure, Gay’s stay in San Antonio is not officially over yet, and there remains hope he will decide to stick around. By declining his
$8.8-million option for next season, Gay gives himself the opportunity to sign elsewhere — perhaps with a more formidable championship contender — but the Spurs retain the right to pay him more than almost anyone else.
Keeping him around would not make much of a splash this summer, just as plucking him off of the free-agent pile did not make many waves last year. But it isn’t hard to imagine a scenario in which that turned into one of the best signings of 2017.
The thought process behind it was sound enough. After being swept by Golden State in the Western Conference finals a year ago, the Spurs realized it was a fool’s errand to try to beat the Warriors by going small.
They sensed that Golden State could be vulnerable to big players capable of playing at a quick pace, and Gay fit that bill far better than someone like Pau Gasol did. In a perfect world, the Spurs would have finished games this season with Leonard, Gay and LaMarcus Aldridge on the court together. That might not have rivaled the “beautiful game” synchronicity of the 2014 league champions, but it probably would have been a lot of fun to watch.
Still, the Gay signing will be remembered as a gamble that didn’t pay off, and the front office cannot say the potential downsides weren’t evident. Gay was, after all, coming off a torn Achilles tendon, and he was past the age of 30. So even though he healed faster than most people expected, it should not have been a surprise to see him miss a significant chunk of games.
When he played, though, he fit. It often takes Spurs’ newcomers a full year to figure out how to feel comfortable in Gregg Popovich’s scheme, but Gay picked it up right away, and he provided exactly what they needed from him.
On most nights, he was the team’s second scoring option — and the top one when Aldridge was on the bench — and he capably assumed that role while never having to demand it.
Off the court, he maintained his Spurs persona even though everything in his background suggested it should have been an adjustment. Before arriving in San Antonio, he had played 11 NBA seasons and only appeared in one playoff series. He wasn’t supposed to know how to win, but he carried himself like he expected nothing less. He had a sense of humor — a prerequisite for anyone who wants to play for Popovich — but wasn’t one for fake enthusiasm. Several times over the course of the season, reporters lobbed him softballs, trying to get an obligatory cliché quote about how stupendous his Spurs experience had been after a career of playing with also-rans.
Almost without fail, the most Gay would allow was that his time in San Antonio was “different.”
There never was a negative connotation with those answers. It was just as if Gay saw no need to editorialize, had no urge to exaggerate, and was content to stick with a matterof-fact approach. That made him pretty Spur-like, too.
Asked late in the regular season about finally making the playoffs, Gay said, “You want to feel like your season was fulfilled and you were rewarded for the hard work you put in.”
As it turned out, a quick first-round exit probably didn’t leave him much fulfillment. And if he signs elsewhere this summer, he will leave San Antonio without much of a reward.
But that will not change the fact that Gay was a perfect
Spur.
Or could have been, anyway.