Woj: Rudy Gay to Sacramento

mauf · Dec 16, 2013

I'm going to take a contrarian view and say I like this deal for Sacramento.

If Gay opts out, they save money. If he doesn't, they'll have a $19mm expiring contract next season to try to parlay into an elite player. (The expiring contract won't make such a deal happen by itself, but it has the potential to be a key part of a blockbuster -- which is more than you can say for any of the pieces the Kings sent to Toronto.)

And trading for a chucker with sublime athletic ability who occasionally makes an eye-popping play is a clever way to tank -- because the Kings got the only "name" player in the deal, casual fans (and knucklehead sports writers) will see this as an attempt to improve the team in the short run, and the product on the court might be more entertaining without actually being better.

Now, like so many other teams, the Kings need to hope for those ping-pong balls to bounce their way.

The X Man Cometh · Dec 16, 2013

Cellar-Door said:
Anyone else seen a Raptors game recently? They are so much better without Gay, I think they win the Atlantic if they and the Celtics keep the same rosters as now

They do look better without Gay. But the last part is a big 'if'. GM Masai Ujiri will do anything he can to tear that team down.

JakeRae · Dec 22, 2013

Early returns are strong for the Rudy Gay is a terrible NBA player perspective. Post trade, the Raptors are now 5-2 with wins over OKC, Dallas, and the Lakers. Granted, those latter two aren't exactly great teams, but they are better than all of the East except Indiana, Miami, and maybe Atlanta.

Can we finally end the debate over whether Rudy Gay is anything other than terrible? This is two years in a row where he has been traded and the team he left instantly and noticeably improved.

Grin&MartyBarret · Dec 23, 2013

knucklecup said:
No, we can't. Because Sacramento has been a better team with him as well.

In games that Gay's played for Sacremento, they're 2-6. They've scored 103.7 points per 100 possessions (an improvement from 101.9 prior to the trade), but they've allowed 110 points per 100 possessions, far worse than the 105.1 they allowed before the trade. So their net rating since the trade is much worse, and they've won games at exactly the same rate. It's not out of the question that they will be better post trade, but in the 6 game sample size we've got there's nothing to indicate that.

bowiac · Dec 23, 2013

There was a time when Rudy Gay was good, he's just gone an odd direction as far as becoming a worse shooter with age.

DeJesus Built My Hotrod · Dec 23, 2013

knucklecup said:
No, we can't. Because Sacramento has been a better team with him as well.

You mean you can't. And that is your prerogative.

That said, its hard to make an argument using anything other than Van-like sample sizes that the guy is special. In short, he is just another veteran guy in the Association and one that I am reasonably sure I wouldn't want playing for my team for anything other than limited minutes and salary.

Devizier · Dec 23, 2013

I feel like we're missing a Phil Robertson joke in here somewhere.

Grin&MartyBarret · Dec 23, 2013

knucklecup said:
In only two of those eight games has he shot below 50%...

So let me get this straight. Now that you can't point to his inefficient scoring for why he's THE WORST PLAYER IN BASKETBALL, you fault him for playing on an average team? You're better than that.

I think this article does a good job of showing the collective opinion of Kings fans, reporters, etc:

"Since his arrival in Sacramento, Gay has been everything the franchise has wanted and needed from the wing"

http://cowbellkingdom.com/2013/12/21/sacramento-kings-allowing-rudy-gay-to-play-with-lessened-expectations/

Huh? You said Sacramento's better. I'm wondering by which measure they're better. And you site a 6 game sample size and link to a blog post about how Kings fans feel about the trade. Got it.

Grin&MartyBarret · Dec 23, 2013

knucklecup said:
Eye test. Those numbers you listed do not paint the whole picture at all.

They played Phoenix tough on the road in his debut. Phoenix is going to be a playoff team out west. Then they beat up on Houston, a really good team, at home by 15. Then they went on the longest (by mileage) trip of their season to play Charlotte, Atlanta, Miami, and Orlando. Beat Orlando, got beat by arguably the greatest team ever assembled in Miami, had one horrific quarter against both Atlanta and Charlotte.

And while the 2-6 record you list helps fulfill your agenda, they're actually only 2-4 in games that Gay has played in.

Okay. 2-4. Offensive and Defensive efficiency numbers were run for 6 games, however, so those are the same as posted above. Honest mistake. I just looked up the date of the trade and tallied their record since then.

But more importantly: I don't have an agenda. The fact that you think that though tells me a lot about how you're approaching this debate.

Grin&MartyBarret · Dec 23, 2013

knucklecup said:
I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to. Please explain.

What I know about Rudy Gay:

1. He's not a #1 option on a Championship caliber team.
2. He's currently being paid more than he's worth based off of mindset from five years ago that Gay was capable of being a #1 option on a Championship caliber team.

That's it.

Eh, forget it. It's not worth rehashing everything you've said about Rudy Gay since he was traded last year. You like him. I don't. We'll leave it at that.

Blacken · Dec 23, 2013

Haha. Eye test.

Grin&MartyBarret · Dec 23, 2013

knucklecup said:
No, please do.

Rudy Gay has been good with the Kings so instead of grilling him for personal achievements, you look towards how Toronto has played in 7 games and how the Kings have played as a team in 6 games.

Stay consistent with your argument and I think there's a good discussion to be had.

Where would he slot in on a Championship caliber roster? Are you saying he's end of the bench fodder?

I'm not ready to call his uneven 6 game sample size a success yet. And I've been completely consistent with my argument. It hasn't changed since February.

As for where he fits on a championship roster? No idea. If he starts defending consistently, takes a gigantic paycut (mid-level money) and promises not to shoot jumpers, I think he's a very serviceable 3/4 combo. But I havent seen evidence of the fact that he is capable of doing that, let alone that he's willing to embrace that role.

Edit: And you claimed Sacramento was better. That's why I looked at the King's numbers. Why is that so hard for you to see?

Blacken · Dec 23, 2013

knucklecup said:
Haha. PER.

You're trying that with the wrong person. PER is neither interesting nor descriptive; the general, pretty widespread understanding of its basic uselessness was one of the first things I ran into when I started looking into metric measurements.

The "eye test" is just dumb. Ethan Sherwood-Strauss put it perfectly: "I don't know what to look for for an 'eye test', and this is my job."

Grin&MartyBarret · Dec 31, 2013

A handful of different takes on the state of the Raptors and Kings post trade were published today:

First, Zach Lowe takes on the state of the Raptors. Some interesting excerpts:

Toronto has scored 105.8 points per 100 possessions since dealing Gay, nearly five points better than it managed with a Rudy-centric offense.Toronto is flinging the ball from side to side, one pick-and-roll bleeding into the next on the opposite wing, bending opposing defenses until an opening emerges. The Raptors are passing the ball 30 more times per game since the trade, per SportVU data provided to Grantland, and shooting about three more 3-pointers — an intended benefit of replacing Gay in the starting lineup with Terrence Ross.

Dwane Casey, the Raps head coach, chuckles at the idea that Toronto has dramatically changed its offense since the Gay trade. "All the same sets," he says, smiling, though the equation has tilted a bit more toward the pick-and-roll.

"The ball is moving," Casey tells Grantland. "Guys are playing together. Everyone is buying in. No disrespect to Rudy, but he's a different type of player."

Meanwhile, BBallBreakdown posted a video highlighting the Kings improvement since the trade, and Gay's lessened reliance on ISOs and increased post ups.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCUHHWLA3JU

wade boggs chicken dinner · Jan 10, 2014

Some breakdown of Rudy Gay since the trade: http://hoopshabit.com/2014/01/09/nba-rudy-gay-trade-15-games/. One interesting tidbit:

[The Raptors'] offensive rating has only jumped a couple of points — 101.1 before the trade to 103.8 after the trade — and on an individual level, no player has really thrived in Gay’s absence with the exception of Amir Johnson, who is putting together a wildly efficient stretch of play. But on defense is where Toronto has really made the huge leap. Their defensive rating has dropped from 102.1 before the trade to 98.3 after the trade and that 98.3 rating is good for fifth in the NBA over the stretch following the trade to now.

Those numbers suggest that Rudy Gay’s biggest negative impact was on the defensive end and a look at the Sacramento Kings since the trade holds up that theory. In the Kings’ 13 games with Rudy Gay, their horrible defense (105.2 before Rudy Gay started playing) has become deplorable, as the Kings are allowing teams to score 110 points per 100 possessions in those 13 games — which ranks last in the NBA over that stretch

Gay's TS% since arriving in SAC is 58.8%, which is pretty good.

It would amusing (from the POV of this thread) if Gay turned out to be a bad player not because he was a chucker (as everyone's eyes indicate) but because he was a horrible defensive players (also contrary to how people view him).

nighthob · Jan 10, 2014

I'm not sure who didn't think that Rudy Gay was a terrible defender, but they'd be in the minority. He's always been viewed as a guy not terribly interested in playing defense.

Grin&MartyBarret · Nov 6, 2014

knucklecup said:
Basketball stats!!!

Guys completely changing the way they play!!!

Edit: Just to be clear, you still never seemed to grasp what you were arguing about Rudy Gay over the last 2 years. Everybody else was saying "Rudy Gay has not been a good basketball player because he does x, y, and z." That Rudy Gay has stopped doing x, y, and z and is now much improved does not make you right.

mauf · Nov 6, 2014

Whether you go by your eyes or the stats, Gay has been a different player since the trade -- not at all like the guy in Toronto who seemingly never passed up a shot, and quite a bit like the guy we thought he had the potential to become in his Memphis days.

At age 28, he's probably too old to be part of the next good Sacramento team, but his expiring contract could be an interesting chit at the trade deadline. Would a contender move a promising young player and a questionable contract in exchange for Gay's help down the stretch, plus his Bird rights next summer? I could see how something like Gay to Washington for Beal and Nene would make sense for both teams.

luckiestman · Nov 6, 2014

Grin&MartyBarret said:
Guys completely changing the way they play!!!

Edit: Just to be clear, you still never seemed to grasp what you were arguing about Rudy Gay over the last 2 years. Everybody else was saying "Rudy Gay has not been a good basketball player because he does x, y, and z." That Rudy Gay has stopped doing x, y, and z and is now much improved does not make you right.

I've never been a big Gay guy (RIP Majeras). But I don;t buy your argument. To be fair I don;t necessarily buy the "stats are bad" argument either. My problem with basketball or football or hockey stats is that they don;t lend themselves to analysis the same way baseball stats do. For an extreme example imagine a QB putting up bad numbers but the O-line is bad, stats guy: this guy sucks, eye-test guy: nah, I think he's good. QB goes to a team with a good oline: stats guy: this guy totally changed the way he plays; eye test guy: i hate you.

My critique basically boils down to this: if your stats cant make forward projections, your stats suck. Making forward projections is hard, really really hard. So I like some of these advanced basketball metrics, and they give another way to really look at the game but man, basketball is not a series of discrete events repeated over and over again like baseball.

Blacken wrote upthread: Daryl Morey is not just looking at spreadsheets. Daryl Morey is looking at spreadsheets to confirm or deny (this one's important) what his eyes and his scouts are telling him

If what he says about Morey is accurate, great. But I've, and maybe not here, seen people start getting so heavy in their stat talk that it makes me think they don't have a real grounding in statistics.

HomeRunBaker · Nov 6, 2014

BigSoxFan said:
I doubt Washington would ever consider Gay for Beal.

Never ever ever. The Wiz love their backcourt for the next decade and very well should.

Grin&MartyBarret · Nov 6, 2014

luckiestman said:
I've never been a big Gay guy (RIP Majeras). But I don;t buy your argument. To be fair I don;t necessarily buy the "stats are bad" argument either. My problem with basketball or football or hockey stats is that they don;t lend themselves to analysis the same way baseball stats do. For an extreme example imagine a QB putting up bad numbers but the O-line is bad, stats guy: this guy sucks, eye-test guy: nah, I think he's good. QB goes to a team with a good oline: stats guy: this guy totally changed the way he plays; eye test guy: i hate you.

My critique basically boils down to this: if your stats cant make forward projections, your stats suck. Making forward projections is hard, really really hard. So I like some of these advanced basketball metrics, and they give another way to really look at the game but man, basketball is not a series of discrete events repeated over and over again like baseball.

Blacken wrote upthread: Daryl Morey is not just looking at spreadsheets. Daryl Morey is looking at spreadsheets to confirm or deny (this one's important) what his eyes and his scouts are telling him

If what he says about Morey is accurate, great. But I've, and maybe not here, seen people start getting so heavy in their stat talk that it makes me think they don't have a real grounding in statistics.

There are offensive line statistics available. Why do you assume nobody would take that into consideration when analyzing a quarterback?

But honestly, that's sort of beside the point. The entire stats thing is a strawman created by knucklecup. My point is not, and never has been, that basketball statistics tell you the whole story. And never did discussions of Rudy Gay even delve into particularly advanced stats; the entire conversation was about how he shot too much and shot poorly.

When Memphis traded him, knucklecup ranted for weeks about how it was a huge mistake, insulted Hollinger, insisted the trade was made entirely based on PER, and predicted Memphis would collapse. They didn't. They actually went on the best run in their history and their scoring per 100 possessions improved drastically. A couple of months later, Gay was traded again, the exact same argument repeated itself as did the outcome. At no point was anybody arguing that NBA stats--advanced or otherwise--tell the entire story. Context matters a great deal in the NBA, everybody acknowledges that. None of the stats referenced over the two years that this argument has played out--regardless of how knucklecup chooses to perceive those stats--ever sought to do anything other than measure Rudy Gay's performance in games he'd already played. The idea that stats measuring Rudy Gay in 2011 and 2012 are irrelevant because of how he has performed in 2014 is, frankly, stupid. Rudy Gay didn't perform well in those seasons. He's performing well so far this year, and performed well while in Sacramento last season. Knucklecup seems to think that's an indictment of the value of advanced stats in the NBA, but that's a misinterpretation of what those stats are meant to do. It seems the mistake he's making is that he's looking at PER as a measure of how talented Rudy Gay is, when in actuality it's a measure of how valuable his contributions were*.

* And again, I don't even think it's a particurly good measure, that's just the particular stat knucklecup focused on because its creator works in Memphis' front office.

Cellar-Door · Nov 6, 2014

I never got the Rudy Gay disproves advanced stats meme anyway.
All PER said was what anyone watching Rudy Gay could tell you.
Shooting and missing lots of bad shots is bad for your team.

In SAC Rudy is shooting less often, and taking better shots, he's also passing much more, drawing many more fouls (and this year making shots at a likely unsustainable rate).He also based on player tracking has greatly reduced his time on the ball.

So yes, Rudy Gay is a better player when he does all of the things that advanced stats and the eye test told you would make him a better player. That isn't an indictment of basketball stats, if anything it bolsters the case for basketball stats accurately capturing player performance.

mauf · Nov 6, 2014

Gay's PER went up significantly after the trade last year, from 14.7 with Toronto to 19.6 with Sacramento. The magnitude of that change is hard to overstate -- it's roughly equivalent to turning Jeremy Lin into Tony Parker.

I suppose you don't need advanced stats to deduce that when Player X is traded for flotsam and both teams improve, Player X's performance must be playing better after the trade than he did before. But it's a curious example to use to support your belief that advanced stats are useless.

luckiestman · Nov 6, 2014

Where are the predictions in this thread that gay was going to be a much better player in Sacramento? If the argument is: advance stats are only good historical measures of who is good, who cares?

Also what does someone's per going up mean? I get it is good but what is the marginal effect?

HomeRunBaker · Nov 6, 2014

Gay is the same player in Sacramento as he was in Toronto. His role was different and the offense was different. Advanced stats don't tell you how many iso's were called for Gay in Toronto. It's the same people who were critical of DeRozan in that same system because it does't play well to advanced stats.

Grin&MartyBarret · Nov 6, 2014

Again, PER is not the point and It was never the point. It's just the strawman knucklecup created for this argument. Nobody was ever arguing the PER was predictive or particularly illustrative of Gays value.

mauf · Nov 6, 2014

I'm not even sure PER is an advanced stat. It's a useful shorthand for what's in the box score.

If "advanced" means "I don't know exactly how it's calculated," then it's an advanced stat, but when I think of advanced stats, I normally think of metrics that attempt to measure things that traditional stats don't measure.

luckiestman · Nov 6, 2014

maufman said:
I'm not even sure PER is an advanced stat. It's a useful shorthand for what's in the box score.

If "advanced" means "I don't know exactly how it's calculated," then it's an advanced stat, but when I think of advanced stats, I normally think of metrics that attempt to measure things that traditional stats don't measure.

While I see your logic, I think bref places PER under "advanced" and to me discussion is easier if we don't have to have semantic arguments

Devizier · Nov 6, 2014

Gay stopped chucking, which is great! If only Antoine Walker was receptive to the advice.

mauf · Nov 6, 2014

luckiestman said:
While I see your logic, I think bref places PER under "advanced" and to me discussion is easier if we don't have to have semantic arguments

Yeah, b-ref's "advanced" stats are a mix of metrics that are derivative of box score stats and metrics that purport to measure things that box score stats don't.

An example of the former stat is TS%. Maybe some people don't care for the presentation, but it's really just a combination of a player's FG%, FT%, and 3P%, and I don't think knucklecup would say those stats don't measure something important. I'm not sure why he'd feel differently about PER, except that unlike TS%, most of us can't describe how PER is calculated.

Those stats are different from, say, adjusted plus/minus. I happen to think that's a fascinating stat, but I can understand why someone would look at a metric that had Nene rated among the league's 10-15 best players a few years ago and dismiss it out of hand, especially where the "secret sauce" of the adjustments is treated as proprietary.

bowiac · Nov 7, 2014

maufman said:
Those stats are different from, say, adjusted plus/minus. I happen to think that's a fascinating stat, but I can understand why someone would look at a metric that had Nene rated among the league's 10-15 best players a few years ago and dismiss it out of hand, especially where the "secret sauce" of the adjustments is treated as proprietary.

Adjusted plus/minus is relatively easy to calculate using R. It's not proprietary at all. Neither is regularized adjusted plus/minus, which the stat you see most often. Also, is Nene's rating as a top 10-15 (per minute) player so crazy back in like 2011?

Most people in the "advanced stats community" judge the "all in one" type stats exclusively based on how predictive they are of future results. RPM is the current gold standard in the regard, which is a blend of box score stats and regularized adjusted plus/minus. All other similar stats are graded against RPM. With respect to Rudy Gay, he actually rated as above average player by RPM last year (1.53 points above average per 100 possessions).

Grin&MartyBarret · Nov 12, 2014

knucklecup said:
Can't you just admit you were wrong and move on with your day?

You're a caricature at this point. It's an act, right?

Blacken · Nov 12, 2014

Grin&MartyBarret said:
You're a caricature at this point. It's an act, right?

It's not, more's the pity.

ALiveH · Nov 12, 2014

There was a post over on celticsblog about trying to trade our best 1st this year + salary filler for roy hibbert (since Indiana is tanking & paul george's comeback is uncertain), then re-signing Rondo and signing Rudy Gay this offseason when Jeff Green opts out b/c he's friends with rondo. I thought it was an interesting concept at least & trying to imagine if it's a legit path to building a contender. The 3 guys have complementary skills, are all in their late 20s, would obviously need shooters at the other spots.

Leaves you a roster built around Rondo, Gay & Hibbert. With all our young guys (Sully, KO, Smart) & all the other future draft picks.

Blacken · Nov 12, 2014

Blacken said:
It's not, more's the pity.

THIS JUST IN

It's cool, bruv. You're a shitty poster and a shitty thinker and apparently a shitty human being on top of that. It's okay. Nobody's judging you.

Wait, no, I am. You are terrible. Go ruin some other board. And stop propositioning me, because I'm really just not that into you.

Cesar Crespo · Nov 12, 2014

And even if he was a "cock sucker" are you implying there is something wrong with that?

Why are you allowed to post?

Woj: Rudy Gay to Sacramento

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