Rudy Gay Downplays Advanced Stats Criticism

Toronto Raptors forward Rudy Gay isn’t very popular with the advanced stats crowd. He knows this, but says he’s not too worried about the critics. As long as his peers in the League continue to respect him — the Raptors finally starting to win would certainly help — Gay says that he’ll be fine. Per NBA.com: “No player is caught in the cross hairs of the NBA’s analytics revolution quite like Rudy Gay. The 6-foot-8 slashing small forward is the enemy of the computer. It doesn’t value his game and it makes no apologies. Gay doesn’t shoot enough 3-pointers or shoot them particularly well, and worse, he takes alarmingly too few from the high-percentage corners. He doesn’t get to the free-throw line frequently enough. When he’s not slashing to the rim, the majority of his scoring chances come from analytical no-man’s land — the mid-range. Combine it all with his low shooting percentages last season and the advanced stats — Effective Shooting Percentage (eFG%), True Shooting Percentage (TS%) and Offensive Rating (offRtg) – offer a less flattering assessment than his conventional 18.2 ppg, 6.1 rpg and 2.7 apg. ‘Honestly, how I view it, a computer can’t tell talent, it just can’t,’ Gay said. ‘When it comes down to it, it’s all about winning, and however you get the win. According to analytics, you either [have] to shoot a 3 or get to the foul line, and it’s not good for people like me that live in that mid-range area.’ […] ‘It’s tough,’ Gay said. ‘Obviously, according to analytics, some of my opponents wouldn’t value me as much as they do. So, a computer can say what it wants, but as long as I get respect from my peers, that’s all that matters.’ […] Gay had laser surgery to correct a vision problem he said he never realized how bad it really was. He said his blurred vision wasn’t why he shot just 41.6 percent overall and 32.3 percent from beyond the arc last season, the second consecutive season in which his shooting percentages plunged. ‘Honestly, I had two bad years of shooting the ball and this last year was really bad, so I just had to go back to the basics,’ Gay said of his offseason workouts. ‘It wasn’t as much my eye sight as it was my form. So, this summer I really had to go back to the basics and fix a couple things and sharpen up my shooting.’ He spent the majority of the summer in his hometown of Baltimore and worked out at his old high school with his personal trainer, Dustin Gray, who Gay said literally moved in with him. Gay said he spent hours each day homing in on the ‘little things,’ the details in his approach and shooting stroke.”