Sacramento Kings: another trade

Rudy Gay is going to the Sacramento Kings in a seven-player trade.

Well the Kings tried to damper my high from the Niners big win yesterday by announcing they traded for Rudy Gay and his horrible shooting yesterday. But being the eternal optimist that I am, I immediately started looking at positive sides of the trade. Sad to see Greivis Vasquez go, but Isaiah will get to start and I never have to worry about him sitting out for most of the fourth quarter. Also John Salmons is gone. I repeat, John Salmons is gone. Don’t rain on my parade about how he will probably find his way back to the Kings, just let me revel in the fact that I don’t have to watch this guy play anymore this year. (I probably just jinxed myself, he’s gonna be back on the team by February now.) And…um…crap…I can’t think of any other good to come out of this trade. Reports suggest the Toronto Raptors will offload Gay, Aaron Gray, and Quincy Acy for the Kings’ Salmons, Vasquez, Chuck Hayes, and Patrick Patterson. Let’s truly break it down:

Rudy Gay is terrible and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Do you know he got laser corrective eye surgery this off season and is shooting worse than he ever has? How do you get better vision and get worse at shooting? He must be seeing the rim better because he’s shooting more than he ever has, but it doesn’t matter because he is shooting 39 freaking percent for the season. If you think that is atrocious, you’re are correct. Feel free to give yourself a pat on the back for getting that right. Someone who shoots that bad shouldn’t be shooting a lot right? Wrong, in Rudy’s case he used 30% of the Raptors possessions (shots, assists, turnovers) while being the worst he has ever been. Seems about right to me. (You’re right it doesn’t). Tom Ziller on SB Nation did a great breakdown of the Rudy Gay part of the trade, and gave me one silver lining. Even though Rudy’s shooting percentage has gone down since a shoulder injury in 2011, his usage rate has been rising since then as well suggesting that if the Kings can correct his usage rate to below 25%, we could see an uptick in shooting percentage. It could also be that the doctor’s messed up on the eye surgery and his vision is actually worse and their is no hope for better play. Here are Ziller’s charts to show Gay’s shooting.

Rudy Gay’s shooting percentage by year.

Gay’s shooting based on usage rate.

And boy do I hope that Rudy doesn’t get us to 35 wins, that would be the worst. I really hope he continues his poor shooting, has me turn on him in 2 weeks, then opts out of his contract at the end of the year. Really, I see no good coming out of Rudy Gay for the Sacramento Kings, but the Kings are reported to going to use him as a stretch 4 so maybe he can brick us to 25 wins still. Also, please don’t let him cut into IT, Boogie Cousins, or Ben McLemore‘s continued development. These guys, especially the last two, are the building blocks for the future and anything that stops them from consistently getting the ball is a disservice to the team. I am really scared of this because Rudy seems to think he is an all-star in this league even though he’s never been named one. I had nightmares last night of Mr. No Stat Sheets in My Locker Room hoisting 25 shots while scoring 20, as the rest of the team plots ways to take him up to Lake Tahoe and dispose of him Godfather style. Optimism is already waning.

I’ll get back to the positive though and talk about how great this could be for Isaiah. He should be in our life 30-35 minutes a game now and that can only bring us joy if we ignore defense for the most part. Our good friend Matt Tuckness tried to diminish his game as just a scorer last night, but that only insults the little guy. He’s so much more than that however, he’s a pick and roll dynamo who consistently breaks down the defense and makes the right decision. Maybe he shoots a lot, but that’s because he can score outside and has great dribbling pace that allows him to get into the lane whenever he wants. He makes the correct play most of the time and has increased his assist percentage and plateaued his turnover percentage this year, despite having a significantly higher usage rate. The usage rate will drop now that he is playing with Boogie more and has the Black Hole Gay on the court as well, but he is the point guard and will continue to have the ball in his hands a lot.

Maybe you can tell I’m not ecstatic about this trade, or more like, I really, really, really don’t like this trade. However, the season can still continue as planned because this highly priced player the Kings got is secretly pretty damn bad. I much rather would have kept the team they had and sucked our way into the top 5, but Rudy Gay might just expensively do that and I’ll be ok with that. But really, not to much good is coming from this trade because Rudy is bound to shoot to much and take away shots from the young guns, unless they Fredo him or Boogie punches him in the face. I just hope Sorry for Jabari, Riggin’ for Wiggins, Scandal for Randle, or whatever other tanking rhyme you can come up with isn’t ruined.