The problem here is that you dismissed an entire body of evidence just because you said so.
Fact: Salmons/Gracia/MbM/DWill/Outlaw highlights the fact that finding a SF in a SF depleted league is tough and even below average SFs are getting paid. That's what I'm getting at, and you don't seem to get it.
Does it though? We drafted Garcia and then signed him to an extension. We traded for Salmons as part of a draft day trade to get a player we apparently were targeting. We also had little cap space available at the time to consider signing a free agent instead. Mbah a Moute was always depth not a featured player (not to discredit him, because I think he was a lot more valuable to this team than Salmons was). Williams started 15 games for us, I'm not ready to write him off as a failure yet. Signing Outlaw was always a joke. None of this past history PROVES that we are incapable of finding a league average SF on the open market. It simply proves that Geoff Petrie failed to do so for a long period of time. In related news, he no longer has the job.
Fact: with or without Gay, the Kings still need a SF and one isn't coming.
Agree with the first part, the second part sounds an awful lot like your opinion. Personally, I'm not frightened by the idea of giving Derrick Williams more of a shot as the starter.
Fact: signing Gay is not emotional, it's logical - even scrub SFs are getting paid money and no respectable SF is coming our way but we already have a very good SF that we can keep for a little more money than most are comfortable with. So what's the logical move here? Let our SF walk or keep the SF? That's the logical conclusion I hope I could have lead you to with by citing the evidence above, but you seem to take it to a completely different realm.
I posted stats which call into question how good Rudy Gay actually is. In light of those stats, I think the conservative estimate of what it would cost to re-sign Rudy Gay (let's say it's 12-13 million per year) is
still too much. If you want to take issue with the stats like Brick did, that's one thing. I personally think PER and WS/48 are fairly good barometers of a player's offensive aptitude though and I haven't seen anyone yet claim that Rudy's defense is good enough to make a stronger case than his offensive stats. Other teams making dumb signings also doesn't make it any smarter for us to pay "scrub SFs" or pay average ones like All-Stars so as to avoid the inevitability of signing "scrub SFs". If anything I'm less inclined than most to let the "curse of a small market" force our hand into decisions which don't make financial sense otherwise.
Fact: No one is talking about giving Gay $119M!!! No one.
We don't have a choice, Rudy has a player option. The option year is $19,317,325 according to basketball-reference. I don't see how this is refutable. If we're asking him to opt in than $19 million is exactly what we're talking about. Oh wait, I didn't see the extra digit in there. You're referring to the Joe Johnson example? Well I never said that was in play, just that it was a monumentally stupid signing some other team made because they didn't want to lose a guy for nothing and didn't see any better options out there. Do you see why that example is relevant? The number is astronomical but their reasons for over paying were the same ones you were suggesting in your argument. I would estimate the total of our extension offer to be 4 years and 50 million. That's best-case scenario and I would pass on that.
Fact: Thornton has very little body of work before he got that contract, he did NOT demonstrated that he could play with our franchise player and a lot of that contract was based on faith. Gay has a long body of work and he HAS shown that he can play alongside our franchise player. The Thornton is NOT the same as the Gay situation.
Not the same, no. Just similar. I watched a lot of games this season. Only briefly did the thought occur to me that I'd love to see Rudy Gay playing alongside Cousins for the next 5 years. It lasted for about one road trip of approximately 80% shooting and then reality set in. But this is a subjective opinion. Technically he can play alongside Cousins. And he does have a long body of work -- but that makes those questionable stats that much more compelling for me.
Oddly enough, you are now claiming that Gay doesn't produce wins. When he was an integral part of the playoff bounded Memphis team.
I'm not claiming it so much as I'm citing the stats which claim it. WS/48 is adjusted every year so that .100 is considered to be league average. Rudy Gay's career WS/48 is .081. That includes the 2 years he played on playoff teams in Memphis. His career average in 7 playoff games (he was injured in 2011) is .085. This season it was .021 in Toronto and .114 in Sacramento for a combined total of .091.
Essentially this means that Rudy Gay is producing less wins in his time on the floor than a league average player. And going a step further it means that scoring a ton of points doesn't always help your team if it takes you too many shots to do it and you're not contributing enough in other areas to offset your inefficiency.
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I'm also not trying to attack you personally. I came off as a little snarky in my first reply as I incorrectly believed you were making your comments somewhat tongue in cheek. It was never my intention to offend, so I apologize for that.