Which creates a contrast, as… THE VERDICT! 600, and what you’ve got is a 32-year-old having the best season of his life.
2.6 BPM? Second-best, and he’s a plus defender.Īnd 2.6 VORP/82? Those are borderline All-Star numbers. Speaking of efficiency, all that great shooting plus those rebounds and assists give Gay a PER of 19.4, his best mark since 2014-15 and the second-best in his life. He’s showing a lot of offensive versatility.
His steals are down (1.1 per 36 is a career low), but his assists are up even as his turnovers are down. He’s even turning the ball over less (just 2.0 per 36, his second-best mark of his tenure in the NBA.) He’s averaging 19.6 points per 36 minutes, and his nine rebounds is a career-high. 511 career best set in his second year in the league. 589 is fully 15 percent better than his previous. The Counting StatsĮven more impressive than the three-point shooting might be Gay’s ability to find the basket on two-point shots, where he’s hitting 56 percent to pull his overall shooting percentage to 53.4, best in his career by a mile. It’s a tier that has included Chris Bosh on the Heat, Ray Allen on the Celtics, Toni Kukoc on the Bulls, and Lamar Odom on the Lakers.
“Is Rudy Gay a legitimate starter even in 2019 and useful third banana behind Aldridge and DeRozan?” What we’re asking of the 32-year-old Gay here is not “can he sustain this shooting accuracy?” That would be a ridiculous question, since Gay is a career 34.7 percent three-point shooter coming off a season where he hit just 31.4 percent of his shots from long range, so the 45.2 is guaranteed to regress. On the one hand, coach Gregg Popovich’s disdain for the three-pointer and the front office’s insistence on getting guys who can’t even shoot them- LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan-makes it all the more likely that their offense is going to happen entirely inside the arc like it’s 1975.īut there Rudy Gay is, hitting 45.2 percent of his three-point shots, and at one point earlier this season, he had led the league at over 50 percent. The San Antonio Spurs are one of the most enigmatic offenses in the league.