5 free agent wings the Pacers should avoid

Rudy Gay

After making it clear approximately 15 minutes after arriving that he wasn’t long for Sacramento, Rudy Gay will finally be signing with another team. In no universe should that team be the Pacers.

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Gay, despite having a fairly efficient season for the Kings last season, is a volume scorer from a bygone era. Would he probably get the Pacer 18 points a game? Yeah, someone has to score. Would he take an unruly amount of possessions to do it? You betcha.

(timeout: did you know that Rudy Gay’s nickname on Basketball Reference is The Great Rudini? God bless the Internet)

I don’t want to ignorantly put Gay into a box. I’ll admit that I haven’t exactly pored over hours of tape on the guy, and he very well could be capable of becoming a better off-ball threat and working on his defense. However, there’s a reason his usage rate has never been below 20 percent, even in his rookie year. He’s a bucket-getter for sure, but that’s not what the Pacers need this summer.

Indiana can surely find a cheaper alternative to Gay. We’ve seen this season that his skill set is about as replaceable as it gets in the NBA (See: Zach LaVine, Jabari Parker).