Rudy Gay has banned stat sheets from the Toronto Raptors locker room in an effort to emphasize the importance of winning over statistics.
Each Raptors player typically receives a stat sheet after games that shows their individual and team stats for the game. The Toronto Sun reports that Gay has put an end to that practice.
“We’re not playing for stats,” Gay explained, via The Sun.
There was no specific incident or moment that led to the decision.
“I wanted to just nip it in the butt before it became an issue,” Gay said. “We come in here after losses, after wins and people are staring at those stat sheets, but that’s not what we’re about. We’re a team and the stat that matters is the W.”
Great, who wouldn’t like to see a player focused on wins more than anything? I’m sure the Raptors coaches and execs like hearing that. Toronto is 6-7 and leading the crappy Atlantic Division after all. But this is really just comical of Gay.
The obvious joke here is that Gay doesn’t want stats distributed so that everyone doesn’t see how many shots he’s jacking up and missing. Gay may be averaging 20.2 points per game, but he’s shooting a terrible 38.1 percent from the field, and he’s attempting 19.4 shots per game. LeBron James, by comparison, hasn’t averaged that many shots per game in a season since joining the Miami Heat. LeBron is averaging 25.3 points per game on 15.5 shots. He recently cracked that if he took 37 shots in a game (like Gay did in a recent loss to Houston), that he’d score 60-70 points easily.
Seein stats actually can be helpful. It can tell you what you did well or poorly in a game. If guys are busy playing in a game, they don’t have a chance to count stats as they’re going. Maybe by looking at the stats they’ll see what their strengths or weaknesses were and know what to work on. And in the case of Gay, it would probably be trying to increase his offensive efficiency.
Chest bump to Beyond the Buzzer
