Mike Malone thought that Rudy Gay would return to his Memphis Grizzlies' form with the Sacramento Kings when playing with strong low-post players as he did with Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol.
“You look at Toronto’s roster, and no disrespect to (big men) Jonas (Valanciunas) or Amir (Johnson), but they don’t have a true low-post presence,” Malone said. “We just thought the idea of putting (Gay) on the perimeter, and pairing that with the inside presence of DeMarcus (Cousins), could really allow him to showcase his abilities.”
"The first thing (assistant coach Micah Nori) and coach Malone did was they asked me where I wanted the ball,” said Gay. “You can’t ask anything better than that.
“I just told them where I think I’d be the most effective, and he took that and ran with it, designed a couple plays for me. And the rest is history.”
Gay is averaging 20.7 points on 53 percent shooting with the Kings.
“The difference is he’s playing with bigs that can score down low,” Rose said. “That’s what he had in Memphis, (teammates who could) occupy the baseline, occupy the bigs, and it gave him lanes to drive and finish or pull up over the top.”
