Grizzlies Get To Welcome Back Rudy Tonight In Memphis.

Guess what we are not the only ones that talk about if a guy will get booed or cheered when he comes back. Grizzlies fans are getting ready to welcome back Rudy Gay for the first time after the big trade last year. Gay has been just terrible for the Raptors so far this season when you look beyond his scoring totals.

Gay is shooting 57-160 (35.6%) and just 10-30 (33.3%) from three point line this season. He has just 13 assists in 8 games so far for the Raptors this season. He just really is not performing like the top level star that his contract suggests he should be.

The Grizzlies have really not missed him at all to any degree. They had their best ever playoff run without him in the line-up and that made the idea of trading him a realistic option for them. Much like the Raptors getting rid of Andrea Bargnani it was addition by subtraction for the Grizzlies in getting rid of Gay.

Facts are Gay is coming off his worst season in many categories last season for field goal percentage to points scored aside from his rookie season. Things don’t seem to be trending in any kind of a positive direction for Gay. This makes his future really uncertain with a player option at the end of the year. Gay still has a solid reputation around the league but seems to be starting to be exposed for his short comings as a player. But there will be teams with money that may be willing to pay him close to top dollar as a free agent.

In the end the Raptors have both him and Lowry with no contract that they control beyond this season. Which makes the Raptors planning a future with this group seem risky even if they were performing well this season. However at 3-5 with a good chance of losing their next 3 games could be 3-8 by the end of the week. It makes the idea of changing direction to getting in the lottery mix seem the right way to go.

The Grizzlies were the only team that beat the Raptors in the pre-season when people were a lot more optimistic about this team. Kyle Lowry at least looked healthy in the game against the Rockets despite the fact he could not make shots like everyone else in the starting line-up.

Terrence Ross was the one guy that came out of the Houston game looking good. He played some solid defense at times and was the only Raptor to shot above 50% on the game.

As for tonight you have both Lowry and Gay played for Memphis and will be looking to impress. This could mean a lot of hero type ball being played by the Raptors.  Hard to have more than what we saw against Houston with only 10 assists in a game that went 58 minutes which is close to 5 quarters of basketball. At the end of the day you want to know why the Raptors are struggling it comes down to two things. Ball movement on offense has been absolutely terrible this season.  The second is terrible defense in which the Raptors did finally show some promise to close out the game against the Rockets. Still I hold out little hope for the Raptors improving to be a good enough team to play consistent enough on both ends to win on most nights against teams that are of the same level or better than them.