The Tragedy of Toronto: The Continued Irrelevance of the Toronto Raptors

While the fan base was at least excited that young players like Ed Davis and Jonas Valanciunas were developing and that Calderon was having one of the most efficient seasons of his career while leading the team to a respectable showing in December and January, it posed a problem for BC.

Here was a team that was utilizing none of the signings that he had made during the offseason. Kyle Lowry was being utilized as a backup point-guard behind Calderon. Meanwhile, 2^nd year player Ed Davis, on a rookie’s minimum contract, had taken over Bargnani’s position and produced much better numbers while showing some grit and hustle, as evidenced by his rebounding efforts. In addition, Landry Fields had played sparingly and had been inefficient when he did play. So what does BC do? Trade away his two most efficient players in Calderon and Davis on an expiring and a rookie contract respectively for quite possibly the most over-paid player in the league: Rudy Gay.

The Rudy Gay Trade and Beyond:

To understand this trade, the course of the Raptors under the captaincy of Bryan Colangelo needs to first be understood.

Here was a team that in 2011/2012 and the early part of 2012/2013, had shown some growth amongst its young players when they were given an opportunity to play. Instead of letting them develop and giving them playing time, while accumulating 1^st round draft picks for the 2014 draft (a process known as ‘tanking’), Colangelo went into ‘win now’ mode and sought to just eke out a playoff berth as evidenced by the signings during the 2012 offseason. The Rudy Gay trade this past January is merely an extension on Colangelo’s flawed philosophy.

Here was a player who had been signed to a maximum contract worth roughly $17 million a year by the Memphis Grizzlies a few seasons prior. While a solid scorer, Rudy Gay has the dubious distinction of never making an all-star team while having never led the Grizzlies beyond the first round of the play-offs. In addition, he is known as a volume shooter who tends to take inadvisable 3- point shots at a low percentage. Yes, he will give you 20 points a game, but it will come at the expense of efficiency and a low field goal percentage.

In offloading Gay to the Raptors, the Grizzlies received massive salary relief, a very promising young player in Ed Davis and the benefit of much more efficient play as evidenced by their current run to the Western Conference Finals. Ball Don’t Lie Yahoo analyst Kelly Dwyer points out that, “The Grizzlies were awful with Gay dominating late-game possessions in the postseason last year, and statistically the worst fourth-quarter team in the NBA prior to the trade [to Toronto] mostly because Gay wasn’t “afraid to take the big one“. Inside-out play still dominates all even in the NBA’s modern, perimeter-dominated era. And efficiency matters in the playoffs, when the rotations tighten and every possession counts.”

This is what the Raptors acquired and aside from an early honeymoon period in February, Rudy Gay has produced at a rate in line with his career statistics. So enamoured was BC with Rudy Gay that he claimed they were looking to extend his max contract over the summer.