What makes Rudy Gay divisive is simply he is not a good shooter.
He puts up points — career average of 18 a game and 19.5 with the Raptors at the end of last season — but he’s a career 45 percent shooter who hit just 42.5 percent with the Raptors. He shot 32.3 percent from three last season. He attacks the rim and shot 54.7 percent in the restricted area last season, but he took most of his shots (411 total) in the midrange and shot just 36 percent on those. He also took 217 threes above the break (not corner threes) and shot just 34 percent on them. His shot couldn’t space the floor, which is what Memphis needed.
He can create his own shot and he scores a lot, but he doesn’t do it efficiently. That makes him divisive — old-school guys love his shot creation, new school guys can’t stand the wasted possessions. Fact is Grizzlies offense got demonstrably better when his shots last season were redistributed to Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph and Mike Conley. Bottom line to me is with Gay they don’t get to the conference Finals, they were better without him.
But maybe part of the reason Gay had trouble with his shot is he couldn’t see. There had been reports out of Canada he was considering goggles for next season, but instead he had surgery, he confirmed to Adam Figman at SLAM (via Ball Don’t Lie).One advantage he’ll have heading into next season: He recently had an operation to correct the vision in one of his eyes, an issue that was first reported back in March in the National Post. “I did have vision problems,” Gay confesses, sitting up on the trainer’s table after Gray finishes stretching out his muscles. “Actually, it was terrible. I could hardly get my license.” The National Post reported that he refused to wear the contact lenses he desperately needed, which was correct: “I have a stigma about that stuff—I can’t put anything up my nose and I can’t touch my eyes. I think that just comes from me growing up seeing people on drugs—I got over my stigma of needles, but I couldn’t do any of that other stuff. I couldn’t wear contacts. I wore glasses, sometimes.”
Gay finally had the operation to clear up his sight early this summer. “It wasn’t even a regular operation,” he explains. “It was some kind of crazy operation that took a lot more time to heal than I thought. It sucked. They had to patch it up [after], and I had to take eye drops, all stuff that I hated. But I had to do it. It’s crazy because as much work as I’m putting in working on my shot, if I come back shooting [a better] percent from the three-point line, everybody’s gonna say it’s ’cause of my vision, not the hard work I’m putting in.”
Gay’s shot creation is a better fit in Toronto than Memphis (where more efficient options existed, and Gay didn’t help because defenders wouldn’t have respected his shot). But if a combination of better vision and better shot selection — plus setting guys like DeMar DeRozan and Jonas Valanciunas (who looked improved at Summer League) — could lead to an improved Raptors team.
We’ll see. At least Gay will see more clearly.