Rudy Gay: Why The Sacramento Kings Underpaid Their Star
By Bryce Olin
The Sacramento Kings reached an agreement with Rudy Gay on a three-year, $40 million contract extension.
Rudy Gay is playing the best basketball of his career since he was traded to the Sacramento Kings from the Toronto Raptors last season. For the first time in his career, he might actually be worth his gigantic, five-year, $82 million contract he signed with the Memphis Grizzlies back in 2010.
In his contract extension with the Kings, Gay is going to make $13.3 million per season with an opt-out available after the first two seasons (before the 2017-18 season).
Throughout his career, Gay has been widely criticized for being overpaid, scrutinized for shooting long, fadeaway, 2’s, and made fun of mercilessly by basketball twitter over the years.
Now, Gay’s on the rebound (I mean that literally and figuratively). He’s making $19.3 million this season with the Kings and is the tenth-highest paid player in the league. While that seems like a ridiculous amount of money for a polarizing jump-shooter, Gay has been worth every penny for Sacramento this season, which makes his contract extension quite the underpay.
Wait… Underpay? THE Rudy Gay is going to be UNDERpaid? How is that possible?
Let’s investigate…
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Generated 11/18/2014.
In a small-ish 65-game sample size, Gay has been fantastic with the Kings, compared to the rest of his career.
This season, he’s averaging 22.5 PPG on 45 percent shooting. He’s rebounding at higher rate than last season, and his assists are up 1.3 per game from his career average. Gay seems like he’s starting to become the complete player we’ve all thought his size and athleticism could allow him to be.
Not only are Gay’s statistics much better virtually across the board, he seems like he’s the perfect complement to play alongside DeMarcus Cousins. This season, together, Cousins and Gay are averaging 44.9 PPG on 47 percent shooting. As a pair, Cousins and Gay are easily good enough to lead a team to the playoffs, but the Kings are looking for that third piece to the puzzle, preferably a good point guard.
While $13 million per season is probably exactly what Gay is worth, the Kings will likely underpay him in terms of what he’ll be able to do in the next two or three seasons. Remember it’s not always player production that determines value, it’s also what they’re worth on the open market.
Who knows exactly what Gay would have been offered on the open market? But, a case can easily be made it was going to be more than $13 million per season.
With the way he’s playing right now, was it unrealistic to assume he could have got a three-year, $45 million offer from someone like the Charlotte Hornets, who desperately need offense? Gay would have also been the perfect stretch-4 for the Houston Rockets, as well, although it would have been a defensive nightmare with James Harden and Gay on the floor at the same time.
Teams will pay for a guy who can do this:
There’s a reason Gay was offered an $80 million contract five years ago.
The 2015 free agent class is weak compared to the crop of talent that was available this offseason. Teams would have come after Gay, especially with the salary cap expected to rise because of the new TV deal. Sacramento, for once this decade, made the right roster move by hanging on to Gay for a pretty fair price.
Obviously, there’s a chance Gay goes rogue like he did in Toronto and Memphis the rest of the season puts the Kings even further down in the hole, but you have to like the Kings taking a chance and locking Gay up for under the market value. If Gay would have kept on this current run until Christmas, Gay and his agent would have started to smell the big deals coming in the summer.
The Kings made the right move. They couldn’t let him get away.