The Kings have officially acquired Rudy Gay from the Raptors along with Aaron Gray and Quincy Acy, Toronto announced via press release. Greivis Vasquez, John Salmons, Patrick Patterson and Chuck Hayes are headed north of the border. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports originally reported last night that the swap would take place (Twitter links).
“We thank Rudy, Aaron and Quincy for their time here. They were great professionals and strong community ambassadors of the Raptors,” Toronto GM Masai Ujiri said in a statement. “The trade gives us good flexibility and more certainty as we plan for our future.”
The Kings plan on using Gay as a stretch-four and see Gay and the recently-acquired Derrick Williams as being capable of guarding either forward position, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports tweets. With Williams and Gay, the Kings are buying low on two notable names that have depreciated in the eyes of many evaluators.
“We’re excited to welcome these additions to our team,” Sacramento GM Pete D’Alessandro said, according to a release from the Kings. “In Rudy we’ve acquired one of the league’s proven scorers while Aaron and Quincy provide size and depth in our frontcourt. We also appreciate the contributions and efforts that John, Chuck, Greivis and Patrick made to the Kings organization. We all wish them the very best moving forward.”
Gay, 27, boasts career averages of 18.0 PPG and 5.9 RPG, but newer metrics such as PER have shown that his efficiency leaves much to be desired. It’s not just fans and front office execs that have taken notice, either. After a November game in which the small forward took 37 shots and scored 29 points, LeBron James remarked that he would put up 60 points “easy” if he attempted such a gaudy number of shots.
While the Kings gain at athletic wing in Gay, the Raptors free up a good amount of money for 2015 and gain a couple of interesting pieces along the way as well. As for the financial part of things, the only guaranteed 2015 money that came back in the deal is Hayes’ $5.9MM contract. Beyond that, they can clear $14.5MM by declining options/qualifying offers for Vasquez, Salmons, and Patterson.
Last month, it was reported that Ujiri was exploring trade options for Gay and others with Jonas Valanciunas, 2011′s fifth overall pick, the only real untouchable of the bunch. Gay was the team’s most obvious chip since he’s still capable of being a top scorer for a team and could be a rental since he has a player option for 2014/15 that he could turn down in favor of a longer deal. With a $17.89MM salary, however, finding a home for Gay hasn’t been easy. Gay’s player option for 2014/15 is worth $19.2MM.
Vasquez, 27 in January, took a major step forward with the Pelicans last season when he put up career best averages of 13.9 PPG and 9 APG. Today’s news means that Vasquez has now worn three different jerseys in this calendar year – the guard came to Sacramento in July as a part of the three-way Tyreke Evans deal. While Vasquez has fans in the Kings front office, they clearly felt that this was a trade they had to make to get a dominant wing. It also has the added benefit of clearing up the Kings’ backcourt logjam.
Patterson, 24, is also in his third career trade with today’s deal. The power forward has had an up-and-down career through Houston and Sacramento and hasn’t been off to a blazing start this season. Patterson is putting up just 6.9 PPG and 5.8 RPG while shooting 41% from the floor.
Salmons, 33, has been seeing almost 25 minutes per contest with the Kings this season but is putting up some of his weakest per 36 minutes averages of his career. Only $1MM of Salmons’ $7MM salary in 2014/15 is guaranteed and it’s a safe bet that he’ll be let go. Acy, 23, hasn’t seen much burn this season, playing 8.7 minutes per contest across seven games.
More than three-quarters of Hoops Rumors readers said that they expected Gay to be traded before the deadline. It certainly helped that Ujiri and D’Alessandro have a history after working together in Denver. By trading Andrea Bargnani and Gay, Ujiri has cleared ~$20MM off of the books next season.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.