Rudy traded to Sacramento Kings

[partial]

Rudy has the physical capabilities to be great at every facet of the game. Coupled with better shooting early in his career it's easy to see why people thought he was going to be an all star. At this point he's his own worst enemy, the prescription for him is that he needs to take and make better shots. If he can't do that then he has to buckle down on defense and he'll have a long prosperous career in the nba as a starting small forward.

 

[dogpause]

I always felt that Rudy put himself and his NBA aspirations ahead of his team while he was here. He will never be one of my favorite Huskies.

 

[Gurleyman]

I always felt that Rudy put himself and his NBA aspirations ahead of his team while he was here. He will never be one of my favorite Huskies.

How so? If anything, the common gripe against him here was that he was too passive and deferred too much to the older players. He also could have turned pro after one year as a guy with "potential" but came back and gave it a good run as a sophomore.

 

[Dogdeacon]

Please you know how many articles grantland was pumping out sh1tt1ng on monta ellis ? Where are they now ? Oh they've turned into rudy gay articles. Just like that.

Dude you are possibly overwrought. Stop reading the site or articles if you don't like them. In looking at your post I was pretty sure I'd read something about how Monta Ellis was a great litmus test of moving a good basketball player from bad to good teams and watching stats improve. He's shooting .472% this year vs .416% last year but not much different than .456 for career. Anyway Grantland wrote about this too, so chill.

I really can't understand the thinking that there is a conspiracy against Rudy Gay by certain individuals. What do they seek to gain?

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/81633/courtvision-the-revenge-of-monta-ellis

 

[Dogdeacon]

How so? If anything, the common gripe against him here was that he was too passive and deferred too much to the older players. He also could have turned pro after one year as a guy with "potential" but came back and gave it a good run as a sophomore.

I think the poster maybe misstated exactly how NBA potential impacted Rudy at UConn. I'd say overall UConn fans felt Rudy wasn't passionate enough and didn't leave everything on the floor because he was looking a bit past UConn towards his NBA career.

 

[CTBasketball]

Rudy just needs to get on a good team with a bunch of good players. Sure his numbers were declining, but he was in Toronto. If he can get this Sacramento team winning, he'll be averaging close to 20 a game again.

 

[Dogdeacon]

Rudy just needs to get on a good team with a bunch of good players. Sure his numbers were declining, but he was in Toronto. If he can get this Sacramento team winning, he'll be averaging close to 20 a game again.

You cannot use the adjective 'good' to describe the 5 wins 13 losses Sacramento Kings. Even in comparison to Toronto (6-12, with Rudy). Rudy was on a good team with good players (Memphis) and unfortunately they overpaid him (and arguably played better when he was hurt and after trading him) so he got shipped out.

 

[jfuchs91]

Dude you are possibly overwrought. Stop reading the site or articles if you don't like them. In looking at your post I was pretty sure I'd read something about how Monta Ellis was a great litmus test of moving a good basketball player from bad to good teams and watching stats improve. He's shooting .472% this year vs .416% last year but not much different than .456 for career. Anyway Grantland wrote about this too, so chill.

I really can't understand the thinking that there is a conspiracy against Rudy Gay by certain individuals. What do they seek to gain?

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/81633/courtvision-the-revenge-of-monta-ellis

I can't speak for James, but I think the point he was making is that when players are relied upon to do the bulk of a team's scoring, oftentimes their efficiency drops. This is what happened to Monta Ellis (and Brandon Jennings) in Milwaukee, and also to Rudy (and DeMar DeRozan) in Toronto. They're all very talented players, but when you're leaned upon to be the primary scorer on a team that's lacking talent elsewhere, you're often forced to take low-percentage shots; to the point where the player's efficiency plummets and they're viewed as a "chucker" and a net-negative player.

The point with Monta Ellis is that now that he's moved to a good team with other talented offensive players around him in Dallas, he's not required to take those same low-percentage shots. Now people are focusing more on how Monta actually is a very talented player, and they're no longer dwelling on his shortcomings when he was asked to do too much for his team.

Hopefully this will be the case with Rudy as well. The talent is there; I don't think anyone denies that. He just needs to find the right situation where he can showcase his skills within an organized offense.

This is why I'm hopeful that the Kings will be good for Rudy. With Isaiah Thomas and Boogie Cousins, they've got two very talented offensive players to play with Rudy, along with both Ben McLemore and Derrick Williams have shown promise themselves. Marcus Thornton is a nice scorer as well. It will take some time to adjust to a new offense, but I think Rudy can fit in nicely with this squad.

That being said, the Kings are a very poorly-run organization, and Cousins is a nightmare to play with. He'll probably pick up his $19 million option next year (who'd turn down that kind of money?) and play on this Kings team for at least the next 18 months. I wish Rudy the best in Sac-Town.

 

[Gurleyman]

I think the poster maybe misstated exactly how NBA potential impacted Rudy at UConn. I'd say overall UConn fans felt Rudy wasn't passionate enough and didn't leave everything on the floor because he was looking a bit past UConn towards his NBA career.

Guys who sabotage their college careers for the NBA usually do it one of two ways (or both) - being overly ball dominant or trying to show a skill (ie three-point shooting/ball handling) that would fit their NBA career instead of playing the way that would most help their college team. Rudy did neither. You could fairly argue that he might have been a really good stretch 4 in college, but with no 2 guards and a frontline that had Boone, Armstrong, Adrien and Nelson, he needed to play the 3 here.

Saying he wasn't passionate enough because he was worried about the NBA seems like a conclusion in search of evidence. He didn't have to come back as a sophomore, and reportedly he did wrestle with coming back as a junior before JC more or less told him that he was ready and needed to go. That could be just the story they told the media, and maybe Rudy had no intention of coming back, but I'm not sure who would have gained from that. And JC sure didn't think his 2006-07 team was going to be better without him - that was his second worst team behind the Economou/Besselink bunch he started out with.

 

[James]

Dude you are possibly overwrought. Stop reading the site or articles if you don't like them. In looking at your post I was pretty sure I'd read something about how Monta Ellis was a great litmus test of moving a good basketball player from bad to good teams and watching stats improve. He's shooting .472% this year vs .416% last year but not much different than .456 for career. Anyway Grantland wrote about this too, so chill.

I really can't understand the thinking that there is a conspiracy against Rudy Gay by certain individuals. What do they seek to gain?

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/81633/courtvision-the-revenge-of-monta-ellis

Monta Ellis is having the best year of his career, 21 games in. This thread isn't about a conspiracy, rudy (Ellis was) is the poster boy for people into metric analytics. All I'm pointing out is how hacky the drivel is. Coming off surgery he was traded to a bad organization, lead by the worst coach in league.
Also it's hilarious hindsight tells us rudy didn't give it his all, he bleeds blue.

 

[Gurleyman]

Monta Ellis is having the best year of his career, 21 games in. This thread isn't about a conspiracy, rudy (Ellis was) is the poster boy for people into metric analytics. All I'm pointing out is how hacky the drivel is. Coming off surgery he was traded to a bad organization, lead by the worst coach in league.
Also it's hilarious hindsight tells us rudy didn't give it his all, he bleeds blue.

That's a fair point. I think he played himself out of a good situation in Memphis to a degree, but Toronto has clearly been a bad spot for him. That said, he can be forgiven for late shot clock 911 shots, but there were a lot of times in Toronto where he just simply got the ball and took 10-15 seconds to dribble himself into low percentage shots. He shouldn't be shooting 38 percent because he should be able to get some easy ones on put backs and dunks. Kemba is struggling down at 38 percent as well, but he can't get on the offensive glass or post someone up when his J is off.

 

[Dogdeacon]

Guys who sabotage their college careers for the NBA usually do it one of two ways (or both) - being overly ball dominant or trying to show a skill (ie three-point shooting/ball handling) that would fit their NBA career instead of playing the way that would most help their college team. Rudy did neither. You could fairly argue that he might have been a really good stretch 4 in college, but with no 2 guards and a frontline that had Boone, Armstrong, Adrien and Nelson, he needed to play the 3 here.

Saying he wasn't passionate enough because he was worried about the NBA seems like a conclusion in search of evidence. He didn't have to come back as a sophomore, and reportedly he did wrestle with coming back as a junior before JC more or less told him that he was ready and needed to go. That could be just the story they told the media, and maybe Rudy had no intention of coming back, but I'm not sure who would have gained from that. And JC sure didn't think his 2006-07 team was going to be better without him - that was his second worst team behind the Economou/Besselink bunch he started out with.

Well Rudy didn't sabotage his college career, he just didn't achieve everything he might have given his talent. He had a very good UConn career, but not quite what you'd expect or hope from a future NBA all-star. I think it is fair to say that it was situational and the storyline that Rudy deferred to older teammates rings 100% true. Much easier to pin those team disappointments on Marcus Williams vs Rudy.

I didn't say what I think UConn fans felt was true. I just think a lot of UConn fans (and I am one of them) feel that Rudy didn't go for the jugular enough, possibly in denial of the situational reality because we all did see a potentially devastating and dominant player that only sometimes emerged at UConn.

So the conclusion is Rudy was not dominant at UConn. The evidence & reasons are the actual circumstances and team dynamics but fans can't help but wish and regret that Rudy (or JC) didn't figure out a way to rise above that situation because it would have translated to much greater success for those UConn teams.

 

[mauconnfan]

Once in a while there's a force in your way and it happened to a real good 2006 team who lost very few games. UConn is not the only team GMU beat during their run so was I disappointed as a fan after the loss....hell yeah!! But it happens even to the very good teams........ask UNC.....but it was no one person's fault. Not Rudy, not Marcus....not any of them It was more about GMU and how good they were until the FF.......

As far as Rudy he was a kid still when he left, didn't know how good he could or was to be. Expectations were real high and he lived up to many maybe just fell short. But was that his fault or ours as fans? I'm guessing the latter......hope he does great in Sacramento......

 

[Dogdeacon]

Once in a while there's a force in your way and it happened to a real good 2006 team who lost very few games. UConn is not the only team GMU beat during their run so was I disappointed as a fan after the loss....hell yeah!! But it happens even to the very good teams........ask UNC.....but it was no one person's fault. Not Rudy, not Marcus....not any of them It was more about GMU and how good they were until the FF.......

As far as Rudy he was a kid still when he left, didn't know how good he could or was to be. Expectations were real high and he lived up to many maybe just fell short. But was that his fault or ours as fans? I'm guessing the latter......hope he does great in Sacramento......

I was thinking more of the BE Tourney losses and especially the NC State loss his frosh year. Agree 100% on GMason had & UConn got randomly hit with their lightning in a bottle. Rudy didn't have a Ray Allen vs UCLA type transcendent game/box score but was very good.

 

[Gurleyman]

I was thinking more of the BE Tourney losses and especially the NC State loss his frosh year. Agree 100% on GMason had & UConn got randomly hit with their lightning in a bottle. Rudy didn't have a Ray Allen vs UCLA type transcendent game/box score but was very good.

NC State was a case where we had a depleted team more than anything. AJ and Rashad both had serious health issues, and then Denham got hurt. We played Rashad 25 minutes right out of the hospital because we had no other options. MW hurt his knee against Central Florida as well but played through it. Only so many body blows a team can take.

The Cuse loss in 2006 was pretty bad, though. We were flat, dug a big hole, came back and should have had it. Rashad backing off McNamara and letting him step into a tying three was a head-scratcher. Yeah, it was deep, but you meet that guy 40 feet away and stay on his shooting shoulder as best you can (it was too early to foul on purpose, even if we ever did that).

 

[Dogdeacon]

NC State was a case where we had a depleted team more than anything. AJ and Rashad both had serious health issues, and then Denham got hurt. We played Rashad 25 minutes right out of the hospital because we had no other options. MW hurt his knee against Central Florida as well but played through it. Only so many body blows a team can take.

The Cuse loss in 2006 was pretty bad, though. We were flat, dug a big hole, came back and should have had it. Rashad backing off McNamara and letting him step into a tying three was a head-scratcher. Yeah, it was deep, but you meet that guy 40 feet away and stay on his shooting shoulder as best you can (it was too early to foul on purpose, even if we ever did that).

Wow, your recollection powers for plays within games is amazing. I was at the NC State game, but didn't remember Marcus was hurt until now. But remembering now I think all the injuries are also part of wishing Rudy was capable of becoming superman and taking over the game/team. Instead he seemingly disappeared. That NC State team was average except for Rodney Monroe err Julius Hodge (that's how my memory compares!

 

[Gurleyman]

I didn't remember that either - I remembered

Wow, your recollection powers for plays within games is amazing. I was at the NC State game, but didn't remember Marcus was hurt until now. But remembering now I think all the injuries are also part of wishing Rudy was capable of becoming superman and taking over the game/team. Instead he seemingly disappeared. That NC State team was average except for Rodney Monroe err Julius Hodge (that's how my memory compares!

I remembered Denham being hurt but Googled to refresh my memory on details (he went in with a bad hammy and then hurt his knee - went scoreless). Story mentioned that MW didn't practice the day before NC State because of his knee injury. He played 39 minutes, so he might not have been visibly hurt. I vaguely recall that he might not have been able to play in the Sweet 16 if we advanced, but can't find anything to confirm that. In addition to AJ and Rashad being hospitalized, we also had a suspended Kellogg on that roster. Walk on Sami Emiziane saw the floor in that game to give him a one-minute rest.

You're right, though - Rudy didn't do much against NC State (JC called it a "freshman game"). Perhaps as a sophomore he might have done more to try to take that game over, but CV and MW played well enough to give us a chance despite the odds. I haven't spent much time dwelling on that loss since that team was pretty much toast (same with the San Diego loss).