In a way, the Grizzlies inability to get any show stopping value out of this trade points to the analytics takeover of the NBA, and the fear many teams have of adding large long term salary for anyone who isn’t a superstar. Given how badly Joe Dumars squandered his last cap windfall on Charlie Villenueva and Ben Gordon, nothing about this trade makes me worry about Detroit at all.
#Rudy gay trade cavs free
This makes Detroit a destination for salary dumps next season as teams try to shed salary for the 2014 free agent sweepstakes, or sets Detroit up to get in on that free agent class. Suddenly, they’ll have almost $22 million in cap space this offseason. Calderon’s also in the last year of his deal, and this deal gets Detroit out of Prince’s contract which has about $14.9 million on it over the next two seasons. He is probably overpaid, but he’s a good distributor and efficient offensive player with a 19.37 PER, +2.0 SR, and -.01 RAPM. This trade gets the Pistons Jose Calderon, who fits the classic Bill Simmons mold of a player who was underrated, overrated, and finally properly rated over the course of the past few years.
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The problem comes in that the other part of Prince’s offense is in the post where he’ll get very few opportunities with Z-Bo and Gasol on the team. Additionally, he’s picked up a defensive prospect who’s a restricted free agent next year, and a guy who will be a decent locker room veteran in Prince. He’s basically traded Gay for a slight downgrade in offensive efficiency but for guys who can hit open threes from specific locations, and who make about $10 million a year less. I’m quite sure Hollinger is aware of this. As Kelly Dwyer notes at Ball Don’t Lie, Daye shoots poorly on the corner three, but fantastically from the wing, while Prince shoots well from the corners and the baseline but takes a lot of inefficient 10 to 15 footers. A 6’11” small forward, with a ridiculous 7’3” wing span, according to 82games, he holds opposing small forwards to a 7.6 PER, and power forwards to a 11.1 PER (to be fair, he’s often playing against scrubs). He was tragically misused/underused in Detroit. He’s a player I wished the Cavs could have gotten their hands on for a long time. In Prince, they get an aging vet who is not very efficient: 12.94 PER, -0.9 SR, -2.2 RAPM, and a prospect who needs a change of scenery in Daye.ĭaye is the hidden gem in this trade. In return for giving up Gay, Hollinger and Grizzlies pick up the efficient Ed Davis, who has an 18.19 PER, but a simple rating of -1.4, and a -1.8 RAPM. One would think with these kinds of players there would be space to shoot better than. Furthermore, he plays with some very efficient players in Randolph, Marc Gasol, and Mike Conley. These paint Gay as a player who posts incredibly average per minute production. With salaries of $16.5 million this year, $17.9 million next year, and $19.3 million in 2014, Gay should have better numbers than a 14.39 PER, a 0.0 RAPM, and an 82games simple rating of +1.3. In looking at what he does on the court, Rudy Gay is massively overpaid for his contributions. This trade had John Hollinger’s fingerprints all over it.
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Second, Analytics driven front offices are slowly taking over the league. In my mind, we dodged a bullet on an overpaid player (see below).
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Sportswriters often liked to conjecture that the Cavs were interested in him. This deal has several implications for the Cavs.įirst, this trade takes the Cavaliers out of the running for Rudy Gay. loses its only Iranian born NBA player, as Hamad Haddadi, obviously the centerpiece of this deal, moves north of the border. In a three way deal, Ed Davis will head to Memphis, along with Austin Daye and Tayshuan Prince. In case you missed it last night, Rudy Gay was traded to Toronto.