Rudy “Not This Guy” Gay, for this one game, was PRIME Rudy Gay. Whether or not that is a good thing is up to the viewer to decide, but I will guide the formation of your opinion by providing my own opinion: prime Rudy Gay was an alright player. Just alright. He had shortcomings which diminished his utility even before front offices’ obsession with efficiency and three-pointers really kicked in. No team he was on was ever as good as it should have been.
In that sense, is prime Gay even something that we want to see return? The low-minutes version of Gay who provides bench scoring is preferable to a Gay who plays 35 minutes a game, takes twenty shots a game, and makes eight of them. Gay was 12-of-21 from the field in his one, which is actually better then I would expect from the Gay of his later Grizzlies years, but not significantly better.
I don’t get the feeling that Gay has worn out his welcome in San Antonio like he seemed to have done in Memphis, Toronto, and Sacramento, so he must be doing something right, or at least he’s not doing things so wrong that he’s getting the blame for the Spurs’ lukewarm record. I’m gonna blame LaFartus “Decline” Fartridge and DeMar “Playoff Trash” DeFrozen.