Post by Rog on Oct 16, 2017 2:20:19 GMT
The 95th nominee of the NBN Hall of Fame was one of my least favorite good players of all time. He was a scorer and only a scorer. Trying to put biases aside, was Gay worthy of a Hall of Fame induction based on his offense alone, or does he just not reach high enough? Lets take a look.
Career Stats
33.1 MPG, 22.4 PPG, 5.5 RPG, 1.7 APG, 1.1 SPG, 0.3 BPG, 2.2 TOPG on 47% from the field, 81.6% from the line, and 42.3% from three
Best Season
Magic(2016) - 29.4 PPG, 6.3 RPG, 2.1 APG, 1.1 SPG, 0.3 BPG, 2.9 TOPG, on 46.5% from the field, 86.1% from the line, and 42.1% from three
Notable Career Leaderboard Rankings
Points: 14th
Career Highs
Points: 50
Rebounds: 17
Assists: 9
Steals: 7
Blocks: 3
Achievements
Championships: 1
Player of the Game: 55
Player of the Week: 0
Player of the Month: 0
Double Doubles: 116
Triple Doubles: 0
Accolades
2006 - All-Star Rookie Game Participant
2006 - All-Rookie Second Team
Arguments For Induction
- Uhhhhh, he won a title? With the Nets as one of their six best players. Yep.
- Any argument about Rudy Gay that is positive begins, and mostly ends, with his scoring. He averaged over 22 points a game for his career. And for nine seasons in his career he averaged over 25 points a game, sometimes getting over 29 a game as well. He was truly a volume scorer, and an elite one at that. Despite a slower start to his career and a really long dip to the end, he still finished top 15, 14th to be exact, in total scoring. Good to great scorer, gotta give him that for sure.
- Not only was he a great volume scorer, he was also really effective at it too. He shot the ball really well, a career 47/81.6/42.3 is incredibly impressive given his volume. I'll say despite my dislike for the player, Rudy Gay really could shoot the ball and was an elite scorer. We've inducted guys for less, Rudy Gay was truly a guy who could do the one thing a team needs to be good at to win, putting the ball in the hoop.
- Overall, Gay doesn't have much to hang his hat on. What he does have is an absolutely elite repertoire offensively. He could score as well as just about anyone in history. He also won a title as a starting small forward for one of the greatest teams in league history. So he proved early on that while he was flawed, you could win with him starting. He other numbers may not have been so pretty, as we'll get into in a minute, but he scored so well, its easy to overlook those flaws and just vote him in.
Arguments Against Induction
- I mean first and foremost he has zero, I repeat zero awards to his name. You can't induct someone based on one reasoning and he not have any awards at all.
- Poor defender, carried no higher than an A- rating, never showed up on the best defenders lists and didn't win any defensive awards. Not only all that, but his 1.1 steals per game for his career is downright terrible. His stocks were under 2 as well, he really didn't give you anything there.
- Gay was also a horrendous rebounder. From your SF you really want 6.5 or higher at minimum, and Gay averaged 5.4 for his career. And he only hit that 6.5 number twice in his career, with a career high of 6.7 rebounds. Absolute horrendous, and rebounds might not be as important for SFs as they are for bigs, but a guy this bad can really hurt you in that department.
- Worst of all though, he wasn't great with the ball if he wasn't scoring it. Which to be fair, he did a lot. But he averaged more turnovers(2.2) for his career than he did assists(1.7). That is absolutely something you cannot have. And he really did have a bit of a turnover issue in his career as well. He averaged 2.2 as mentioned but reached closer than 3 more than a couple times. You can't have that for a guy who didn't give you anything more than the scoring he gave you.
- And overall, you have to ask whether or not he was actually an elite scorer. Sure he did good numbers for those nine seasons we mentioned earlier, but 27+ realistically is elite, and he did that only four times. Is that elite? I don't know, the bigger question though is realistically does it matter? That lack of awards and lack of peripheral stats really paint the picture of a guy who did one thing really well, maybe not even elite, but didn't do a single other thing at anything more than average, and even then he didn't touch average in anything else either. Is that a guy you want to induct into the NBN Hall of Fame? I know I don't.
Vote carefully, and remember to throw out arguments regardless of which side you're on. This should be a discussion that eventually gets the league to the proper decision on him. Your vote can also be retracted after it's been cast if you feel like switching to the other side based on the arguments that have been made. To be inducted, a player needs 70% and to be considered in a later class they need 50%. Vote carefully.
***BONUS - Don't forget that everyone who votes gets $25 and the person that makes the best argument or contributes to the discussion the best will be awarded an extra $25***
. The guy just turned the ball over too much, wasn’t a great rebounder or passer and didn’t do much in terms of stocks. There’s not much really to add past saying “good-great scorer” and I think that kills his chances.
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