JANUARY 19th, 4:24 PM: Gay’s MRI confirmed full tear of his left Achilles, Kings radio reporter Sean Cunningham tweets. He’ll have surgery in the coming days, Cunningham adds.
JANUARY 18th, 11:50 PM: Kings star Rudy Gay suffered a torn left Achilles tendon in Wednesday’s game against the Pacers, tweets James Ham of CSNBayArea.com.
That was the preliminary diagnosis from the Kings’ medical staff. An MRI will be conducted Thursday to confirm the injury.
Gay had to be carried off the court after being hurt on a non-contact play late in the third quarter.
If the diagnosis is correct, it would mean the end of Gay’s season and possibly his time in Sacramento. He had proclaimed before training camp that he planned to opt out of his $14,263,566 deal for next year and test the free agent market. However, that could change now depending on the severity of the injury.
It would also remove a big name from the trade market barely a month before the Feb. 23rd deadline. The Kings were widely expected to find a taker for Gay rather than lose him for nothing once the season ended.
Sacramento will not be able to file for a Disabled Player Exception to replace Gay, tweets Bobby Marks of the Vertical, who notes that the deadline passed on Sunday.
This is Gay’s fourth year with the Kings after being acquired in a trade with Toronto midway through the 2013/14 season. He is averaging 18.7 points and 6.4 rebounds in 29 games.
so he won’t be traded
Just awful… Could be his career hope not
Man…GG. Terrible timing for him, though I guess there’s never good timing with an injury like this. And he gets stuck in Sacramento for another year, most likely. This is also probably a career changer for him. Really unfortunate. It also takes away a plan B for Paul Milsap losers in free agency
Having gone through 2 years of rehab for mine, g’luck man. He’s going to opt-in no doubt now.
Just awful timing for Rudy and the Kings. For Rudy, this could be a career changer. Just as we saw with Wes Matthews needing a couple years to fully recover from his Achilles injury, it could prevent Rudy from playing 100% for a while. As for the Kings, whatever they planned with Rudy is now on hold or out altogether. They can’t trade him now with his value so low, plus Rudy may exercise his player option for next year to stay on Sacramento’s payroll for another year, unless, like Matthews, he finds a good offer from another team and recovers.
Maybe trade him to the Nets? They need salaries to reach salary floor to start with plus if he opts in, they’d have an actual NBA-level player on their roster.
Or they could hope he is better next year, and is playing good basketball 12 months from now, and salvage a first rounder as a rental. That’s a bit of a risk though. They may not want to keep the payroll on their books anyway. Just a thought.