Player Capsules 2012, #115-117: Rudy Gay, Emeka Okafor, Brandon Jennings
As our summer mainstay, Aaron's writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. Intent is to get you talking, thinking, and appreciating the myriad of wonderful folks who play in our favorite sports league. Today we continue with Rudy Gay, Emeka Okafor, and Brandon Jennings.
Follow Rudy Gay on Twitter at @rudygay22.
Rudy Gay is a reasonably interesting player, in theory. A reasonably clutch player ("No! Not Rudy Gay! NO!!!"), Gay is a decent scorer and a surprisingly good defender. Seriously, watch him play defense. He's not some huge plus defender in the make of Tony Allen, but he keeps to his man without fading off, rarely gets lost, and defends without the sorts of cheap fouls that are an occupational hazard to most subpar wing defenders. Most second tier volume scorers -- Monta Ellis, Kevin Martin, J.R. Smith -- see their scoring as a justification to go space cadet on their defensive responsibilities. Not so for Rudy Gay, although the number of times I've seen his defense praised can be counted on a single hand. I suppose it's not incredibly praiseworthy; after all, he's not an incredible plus defender, he's simply a decent defender who happens to actually put in his time on that end. It's kind of sad that scorers like Iverson and Melo have lowered the defensive expectations for volume scorers to a level that's low enough for "literally putting in effort and being a non-liability" to be worthy of praise. But that's where we are, so he should be praised for that.
His numbers have fallen off, as of late, and many non-Grizzlies fans have wondered why. There are two reasons. First, he's simply listened to a bit too much of his own hype. Gay has never been an extremely good heavily-guarded long-ball shooter -- in 2011 he shot 39% from three (on three heaves a night!) but beyond that he's tended to be slightly above average to below average from three over his career. He's tended to be relatively above average for the long two (with his career high of 45% from the long two in his sophomore season standing up to some of the best numbers a volume scorer can post from that range, ever) and relatively above average from the midrange, with his biggest problem being post-ups and short 3-9 foot jump shots. Still, the more you guard his shot, the worse he shoots -- last season, he not only skewed his game almost entirely to long balls, but to well-guarded ones. As a result? Gay posted his worst season in his career, even though he was healthy the whole year. He's not a double-team player. He'd be a fantastic 1st scoring option if he stopped trying to shoot over double teams and actually use his reasonably solid passing ability every once in a while. But until he does, he's a middling-to-deficient one.
One of the other big problems, for Rudy Gay? He simply can't seem to internalize the importance of free throws. Grizzlies fans would love to see Gay get more aggressive and try to force the issue on getting to the line, especially since he's such a good free throw shooter -- he took only four free throw attempts per game last year, putting him below 50 NBA players. Here are a sampling of the 50 players that shot more free throws a game (or just as many) as Rudy Gay.
- The Flaming Ghost of Amare Stoudemire
- Danny "I Am The Danger" Granger
- A phantasmic projection resembling Tyreke Evans
- Jerome Dyso-- wait are you kidding me Jerome Dyson really oh my god seriously.
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