That’s a big number for new owner Robert Pera, who took over the franchise last November and has quickly started addressing the team’s salary situation. The 6-foot-8 small forward is due $16.5 million this season with $37 million more over the next two years. Gay, averaging 17.2 points and 5.9 rebounds, signed a five-year, $82 million maximum contract in July 2010 with Memphis. It’s tough.” Prince and Daye were both listed as inactive for the game against the Pacers in Indiana on Wednesday night, but a Pistons spokesman decline to comment. “I’ve done everything possible for this team. “It’s been my home for eight years,” Calderon said in Atlanta, shortly before leaving the arena. The moves surprised many around the league, including Calderon. The Raptors gave up point guard Jose Calderon and forward Ed Davis in the deal, and another person familiar with the negotiations said the Grizzlies were in discussion with the Detroit Pistons to swap Calderon for Austin Daye and Tayshaun Prince. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal had not yet been announced. The Grizzlies agreed to trade their star swingman to the Raptors on Wednesday, parting with the leading scorer on a team that has aspirations of making a run in the powerful Western Conference. The Grizz let him walk after the season.Rudy Gay is on his way to Toronto in the latest and most dramatic move in the Memphis Grizzlies makeover, a person with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press. He played serviceable minutes in Memphis before being traded to the Celtics in a deal for a player that would have a bigger impact, Jeff Green, who was eventually moved for enigmatic guard Lance Stephenson in 2015–16. The only notable addition for the Grizzlies was Tayshaun Prince. The second-rounder Toronto sent to Memphis was used to draft Jamal Franklin, who was waived and became a star player in China. Daye actually wound up signing with the Raps, while Davis inked a deal with Portland, where he remains today.
#RUDY GAY TRADE MEMPHIS FREE#
In Memphis, both Ed Davis and Austin Daye became free agents, too. It’s almost jarring how little good came of this trade for both the Grizzlies and Pistons.ĭetroit got nothing in return for Calderon, who, as mentioned, hit the free-agent market the summer after the deal that ended his Raptors career.
#RUDY GAY TRADE MEMPHIS SERIES#
He played out the season and then signed with the Dallas Mavericks, where he started every game he appeared in, including the Mavs’ grueling seven-game first-round series vs. There are a lot of things that you can’t control.”Ĭalderon looked woefully out of place in a Detroit uniform.
#RUDY GAY TRADE MEMPHIS PROFESSIONAL#
“You learn,” Calderon told me just prior to the trade, “that the only thing you can control is being professional and staying focused. With the Raptors, Calderon had survived Thunderdome time and again. One of the Raps’ all-time fan favourites, Calderon was a rock-solid, if unspectacular, point guard who proved to be one of the NBA’s most reliable playmakers during his eight-year tenure in Toronto. The toughest part of the deal for Raptors fans, however, was that it signalled Jose Calderon’s exit.
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So he had that going for him, which is nice.
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Still, Gay brought a level of talent and athleticism, and came to Toronto as secretly one of the more clutch players in the league, something that Raptors fans had already seen close-up: While Colangelo et al should have seen it coming - and possibly did - he was ill-fitted alongside DeRozan, who was coming into his own as a player and shared a similar skill-set on offence (if you think the Raps play a lot of iso-ball now…). Only Gay quickly proved to be a fairly terrible fit. With two years remaining on his contract, Gay would be the centrepiece of a Raptors offence that already featured DeRozan and was about to get Andrea Bargnani back from an extended stay on the injured list. In Gay, the glass-half-full thinking went, the Raps had brought in the best player in the deal - an athletic wing with playoff experience (Gay’s Grizzlies teams had made the post-season each of the previous two seasons) and a potential go-to scorer. So we’ve established that the Raptors were more or less a steaming pile up until the point of the trade. Let’s take a closer look at the trade that brought Gay to Toronto and the aftershocks of Colangelo’s Last Stand, both then and now. In retrospect it should have been painfully easy to see that Gay was hardly the answer the Raptors needed - a mismatched piece from the wrong puzzle and only a small part of bigger changes that needed to take place in order for the Raptors to become relevant again.īut it did play an integral part in franchise history and in returning the Raps to winning basketball it hadn’t experienced in half a decade.