I feel like a lot of times with certain players, it’s where they’re getting the ball, it’s where they’re scoring, it’s the position they’re put in. “We look at him differently than maybe others do. This fact was not lost on Kings GM Pete D’Alessandro, who expressed skepticism in the analytical dismissals of Gay immediately after the trade:
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He’s clearly talented, and in the right environment he could be a poor man’s James Worthy. Within the Toronto offense he was pushed to the wrong side of Oliver’s skill curve.īut the argument that he’s bad at basketball is foolish.
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Within the cap-obsessed NBA, Gay has been promoted to the level of his incompetence. But it’s perhaps more accurate to say that Rudy Gay, the contract, has been off-loaded twice. Rudy Gay, the player, has been traded two times in the last year. This is not his fault, and to quote my coworker, “keep gettin’ them checks, Rudy.” Players don’t build rosters, they don’t write the contracts, and they don’t design the offenses. As a King, that number has boomed to 65 percent.ĭespite his increased efficiency, Gay is still not worth $17.89 million per year. As a Raptor, Gay made only 43 percent of his shots inside of eight feet. But the biggest development has been close to the basket, where he’s been ferocious. Back in Toronto he made only 35 percent in that zone. In Toronto he averaged 19 shots per 36 minutes in Sacramento that’s down to 15, and his attempts are going in more frequently, especially in the midrange and close to the basket.Īs of Monday, Gay had made exactly 50 percent of his 92 midrange attempts in Sacramento. He is basically shooting from the same spots, but less frequently. Gay’s overall field goal percentage has shot up from 39 percent in Toronto to 53 percent in Sacramento. Twice in Memphis and now in Sacramento, he uses fewer possessions and his efficiency goes from below-average or average to above.” Oliver himself sees Gay as an example of the skill curve phenomenon: “It is pretty dramatic how much more efficient Gay has been in years where he hasn’t used a lot of possessions. Since arriving in Sacramento, Gay’s numbers have been great. Coincidentally or not, Gay was also on pace to bottom out in a lot of efficiency measures. As a Raptor, Gay was using an insane 31 percent of Raptors possessions (a mark higher than Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, and LeBron James) he was easily on pace to set his career high in that category. Since then, he’s looked like a marvelous scorer (not a typo). One reason bad NBA teams are populated by players with bad stats is that those guys are asked to perform beyond their limits.Ībout five weeks ago the Raptors traded Rudy Gay to Sacramento.
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Oliver theorizes that players are efficient up to some usage threshold, but beyond that point they become less efficient. In his book, Basketball on Paper, Oliver introduces the “skill curve,” which examines the relationship between the usage and efficiency of NBA players. In terms of basketball analytics, the great Dean Oliver put forth a similar notion. Peter and Hull refer to this as the “level of incompetence” and suggest that many jobs tend “to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties.”
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The core idea was that workers continue to get promoted, so long as they produce effectively, but at some point they get promoted one too many times and are unable to remain efficient. In their 1969 book The Peter Principle, Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull dissected the relationship between promotions and competence in the workplace.