Rudy Gay's about to show the world he's on Durant's level

i must be missing this new level rudy gay is taking his game to. he appears to be putting up almost exactly the same numbers as he did last year. and the year before. and the year before that. and the year before that.

really, go look at his numbers. after his rookie year, he's been the exact same player for 5 years running.

in fact, here is his page on basketball-reference so you don't have to go find it:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/gayru01.html

whatever you say about the guy, you gotta say he's consistent. his points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turnovers, FGA, and fg% have moved in an unbelievably narrow range for 5 years. contrary to the narrative that paints him as young with a really high ceiling, he's 25 and is the same player he was at 21.

it's even harder to say he's taken his game up a level when he's having his most inefficient year since his rookie season. he scores 18.6 ppg but takes 16.6 fga/gm to get it. that's not elite. KD can give you 30 with a 60 TS%. gay is giving you 19 with a 51 TS%.

why should we? 18/6/2 with poor efficiency and non-elite defense is upper echelon? it must be a big echelon. a PER of 17.7 and WS/48 of .100 (exactly average) aren't getting me too excited. oh, and a +/- of +1.7. he sounds almost really average. maybe a little above.

 

well at least it was a pretty good previous season. it had to hurt seeing what was essentially the reverse gay-battier trade (with rudy knocked out for the year and battier traded for non-player thabeet) and then see the grizzlies finish the season much better and then win their first playoff series ever and get to game 7 of the 2nd round with rudy gay on the bench. it was almost as if the grizzlies didn't really miss gay stealing shots from zach randolph.

 

ok, idgaf about those numbers, but to say that rudy gay is an average player, or a little above is insane. He is a top 5 small forward in the western conference, i don't see how that is average...

 

I'll agree on Deng, but not by much.


While, outside of creating his own shot and maybe 3 pointers, what other aspects of the game does Iggy best Wallace in?

 

"Top 5 SF" in only half the league doesn't say much. SF is practically an artificial, undefined position. Small forwards are either interchangeable with shooting guards, or they lack the handles of a guard and aren't big enough to play power forward (a position that itself is much closer to center).

Look at the All-Star rosters over the past few years. The number of players who call themselves "small forwards" is pretty thin. Like about 3 players out of 24. On the East you have LeBron. In the West, it's been Durant and Carmelo (who's been shipped East).

Rudy Gay doesn't approach any one of these guys. He's definitely shouldn't have a max salary.

 

outside of being good at hitting game-winning shots, what else exactly does he do well above average? and taking shots doesn't count. you have to hit them as well. he scores at an above average rate but that's only because he shoots a lot. his efficiency is almost always right at league average or a little below. he rebounds but not at any sort of high rate. he only average 2 assists per game. he's not a lock down defender or anything. his team didn't seem to miss him last year.

 

i didn't say they were. it seems like he's hit quite a few in his career.

but is he really? he has never been more than average in terms of efficiency. even without looking at the stats, one thing that has always stood out when watching him is just how many mid-range and long 2's he takes. he's fairly good at them and it leads to a nice-looking fg%, but the thing is he doesn't hit many 3's and, even more puzzling, he hardly ever gets to the line. for someone as athletic as he is, it seems almost impossible that he is taking 3.5 free throws per game while taking 16.6 shots per game. that's just a really really low ratio for a wing player who can create his own shot. he's not out there relentlessly attacking and putting pressure on the D. he basically just takes the mid-range and long 2, the most inefficient shots on the court and the shots a D wants you to take, and it seems like he just wants to take those shots. outside of one time when chase budinger was guarding him, i hardly ever watch a memphis game and think "wow, how are they going to stop rudy gay?" he hits some shots, misses some shots, sometimes he makes some nice, athletic plays, and other times you go 5 or 6 minutes without even noticing he's on the court. his stats seem to align perfectly with his play. a solid player but rarely a dominating presence on the court who forces the other team to really adjust.

i didn't really say he was a ballhog. but he does get his shots up. 16.6 a game certainly isn't a low rate. he shoots well enough that he's not necessarily hurting you by shooting, but the way zach randolph was playing last year, if you can take 5+ rudy gay shots and give them to randolph and also gasol, i think you're better off.

i think he's a fine sucker. and i didn't say rudy gay sucked at anything. he seems to be remarkably average or slightly above average at a lot of things. that adds up to being a little bit above average overall.

 

Yeah, because teams always approach other ball clubs to try and obtain "average" or "maybe a little above average" players for top 4 picks:

http://aol.sportingnews.com/nba/fee...wn-offer-from-cavs-for-no-4-pick-for-rudy-gay

 

What really irks me about this board is the term effecient. People confuse effeciency with actual production. Case and point, kevin martin.

Morey or whomerver have tried to rationalize martins ts % as being relevant. When a guy shoots 43% from the field, that's what he shots from the field. I don't care rudy gay or deng shoots 46% from the field but they don't get fouled. In the playoffs, no one talks abut effeciency or ts%. They talk about making or missing shots. What good is ts or effeciency if you can't get a shot off. I do know and have seen deng in the playoffs and his game translated in the playoffs just as I think gay will translate in the postseason. Know why? He can't take and make contested shots under stress. In the playoffs, that's what u look at. You're no good if u can't even squeeze a shot off. So y'all can have ts, give me the guy who shoots close to 50% vs the ts 60% guy.

 

just read this thread.... the idea that he must be good because he is a top 5 sf in the west is like saying that gortat is a big time player because he is a top 5 centre in the west.
- rudy gay is a really good player but he is not in the elite company..
- i would put him with the second tier stars.. AT MOST

 

^Pure ignorance up there. TS% does not ignore FG%, FG% is one part of what makes up TS%. And yes, people do talk about free throws, a lot. Fans LOVE to whine about how the refs supposedly fixed a game by creating a large FTA disparity between the teams.

 

Leebigez's point is that Martin's TS%, historically, has been inflated by his high rate of free throws. But that free throw rate is not sustainable in the playoffs, where the refs are more inclined to let contact go.

Cheap free throws were a big part of Martin's game. His efficiency has gone way down this year, with the refs being more selective on what's a foul. Martin's TS% went from .601 last year to .535 this year. Even if he shot 3s at the same percentage as last season, his TS% would still only be .546.

A player who doesn't depend on the ref bailing him out in order to get a good shot off has an advantage at the end of games when the score is close. In those situations, the ref will be more inclined to let the players play and make a solid basketball move.

 

TS% is based on FG%, its more refined because the FG% doesn't take into account fts and 3 pts. Whenever you take a ft it doesn't get called a fg, but you're getting ft attempts which can add points into your team. 3 pts are worth more than layups and dunks, but each 3 pt shot is still taken as a fg.

Would you want a guy who takes 5 threes and makes 4? Or a guy who takes 7 twos and makes 6? Or the dude who shot 1-5 but somehow ended up with 20 pts? You can go around with a calculator, or you can look at TS%.

When people complain about TS% or efficiency not mattering in the playoffs, it just means they're too stupid/lazy to understand these concepts.

 

Looks to me that leebigez was just railing against advanced stats in general. Neither Kevin Martin (one career playoff series) nor Rudy Gay (zero playoff appearances) has played much in the postseason. So an argument based on how they would supposedly do in the playoffs is really just an unsupported hypothetical.

Even with his monster FTAs stripped from him this season, Kevin Martin is still as efficient as Rudy Gay has been over his career. Martin is more efficient right now.

And it stands to reason that if refs aren't calling as much fouls in the playoffs (does anyone have actual data on this?), then Gay's unimpressive foul-drawing abilities would be even worse as well.

 

Gay as good durant...put down thr crack pipe..rudy gay is good but he's a borderline all-star durant is a superstar...if rudy gay was as good as durant..memphis would be the best team in the league by far..

 

Roslolian, the myth is if a player is more effecient, the shots he normally would take is distributeed to other players. Like when martin was shooting 9ft a game and since a foul isn't counted as a shot, those extra shots go somewhere else and they don't. I don't care if martin get 20pts on 13 fga and rudy get 20 on 16 fga, its still 20 pts. Guys like rudy, deng and guys who don't get a lot of foul shots translate late in game and in the playoffs.

Jim, durvasa has helped me a lot in terms of advanced stats or metrics, but a lot of things in basketball or sports can't be measured. What makes a guy like rudy a better player than a guy like martin is his ability to create and make a shot while being well defended late in games. I also remember posters requoting morey on how charges are better than block shots or that size don't matter.

 

why? both teams get the same number of possessions in a game. the winning team is the one who is more efficient with their possessions. efficiency is important.

using kevin martin to claim efficient players aren't important is disingenuous. he's a singular player. somehow simultaneously a volume scorer who is highly efficient who also can't get his own shot whenever he wants. that's very rare because practically every volume scorer can get their own shot. what separates the great volume scorers from the good or average volume scorers is efficiency.

because it is. scoring more per possession is what the entire game of basketball is about. even with martin's inability to always get his own shot, the rockets #4 offense last year was due in no small part to martin's ability to get a large number of points while using a small number of possessions. getting 23 efficient points a game meant we were getting almost a quarter of our points as efficiently as possible. that's a good thing.

and when a guy scores 1.2 points per possession that's what he scores per possessions. not caring about everything that goes into that 43% is ridiculous. you're saying you'd rather have a who shoots 44% on all 2's than the guy who shoots 43% on all 3's?

maybe that's just the people you talk to. everyone who matters cares about efficiency. it's what every single thing that happens on the court should be building toward. every dribble, every pick set, every block, every shot, it's all about being efficient. the more efficient team wins the game.

the number of games that have been won by a team not shooting that well but getting themselves to the line a lot for efficient free throws is enormous. getting to the line is how stars turn bad shooting nights into overall effective nights. if you don't think getting to the line is important, then i don't know what to tell you. it's the best way to get easy points.

i don't know. i didn't realize only inefficient players could get shots off. i'm almost sure kevin durant and his 60 TS% involves a lot of getting his own shot off. same goes for a lot of other above average scorers who are efficient. this isn't some steve kerr vs rudy gay conversation.

the ability to get your shot off matters a lot more if we're talking about the last few possessions of a game. if you wanna take rudy gay for the last possession over kevin martin, then fine. over the course of a whole game, all things being equal, i'd rather take 23 points at 60 TS% than 19 points at 50 TS%, shooting percentage be damned. you'll win more games that way.

and this is why players like rudy gay get stupid contracts. give me the guy with the better FG% who isn't nearly as efficient. give me the guy who scores more points, i don't care how many shots it takes to get them. give me the guy who gets steals but gets lit up by everybody. give me the guy with the higher batting average who only hits singles and doesn't walk.

so you take the guy who goes 10-20 for 20 points.

i'll take the guy who goes 7/15 and 10/11 from the line for 24 points.

 

Durant's defense is head and shoulders better than Gay's defense. His offense....not even gonna compare them. Durant was built to play in this NBA.

Top 5 right now: Kobe, LeBron, Durant, Wade, & Howard.

Next 5: Rose, Anthony, CP3, Nowitzki, & Love.

Next 5: Pau, Aldridge, Westbrook, Griffin, & Nash.

Next 5: Lowry, Bynum, Milsap, Marc, & Monroe.

Lowry is as good as it gets when it comes to PGs in terms of contract production & efficiency. Too bad this league is flooded with great PGs otherwise the Rockets could land an all-star center with him.

Spoiler

Next 5: Rondo, Jefferson, Harden, Williams, & Wall.

Next 5: Bosh, Manu, Martin, Irving, & Amare.

Next 5: Horford, KG, Duncan, Randolph, & Noah.