I believe the thinking is that if he opts out, there's a good chance he signs somewhere else.
For instance, the Lakers are going to be about 7 bazillion dollars under the cap and will be looking to sign an impact free agent this year and keep enough money to give Love a max contract next year. If LeBron doesn't opt out of his contract, is Rudy the best FA on the market? I don't know, but he's close. If the Lakers offer him a contract, he has to choose between a team that has been struggling for the past decade (but has Cousins) or a team that has been historically great (and has Kobe, and will promise they will go hard after Kevin Love in a year). Frankly, I'm worried.
i suppose it depends on how gay envisions the remainder of his prime. he literally
just got out from under some truly embarrassing labels. his contract has long been viewed as among the worst in the entire nba. his confidence was driven into the ground by the weight of a hundred talking heads proclaiming him the most inefficient player in the league in his stint with the raptors. i have to imagine all of that was pretty tough to swallow. s***, he had stat sheets banned from toronto's locker room just to try and escape some of the noise from the analytics crowd...
yet here he is, in sacramento of all places, playing some of the best ball of his career. i guess i just have a hard time imagining that a player who has endured so much criticism would bolt for the money, particularly when the prospects of a team like the lakers are no better than they are with the kings. playing alongside demarcus cousins has
already re-energized gay's career, and i would think that's worth something to him. he excels when paired with quality big men, and in sacramento he's playing with the best in the game, but he's gonna skip town to go play with the creaky knees of kobe bryant, the ghost of steve nash (and possibly an aging pau gasol), along with a handful of nobodies and cast-offs? maybe kevin love signs in LA in 2015, and maybe he doesn't, but i certainly don't make a decision as a free agent based on that flimsy hope...
perhaps you're right, though; perhaps the lure of los angeles and the promise of big bucks will be enough to snatch rudy from the kings, or perhaps pete d'allesandro has a monetary figure in mind that rudy will find unacceptable, but i feel like there's a fairly comfortable middle ground there, and i don't think the kings' pitch (if they intend to make one in the event that rudy opts out) is going to be so terribly wanting that gay hops the fence to join the lakers. he strikes me as a player with some measure of individual pride in his level of play, and i'm not so convinced that he's going to pack up his image rehabilitation for the extremely bright lights of los angeles...
now, i don't know what other free agent destinations might be appealing to gay or might provide him with opportunities to play with greater talents. i haven't done the research on which teams have the necessary cap space. but i do know that dwight howard did considerable damage to the lakers' luster when he left in free agency. he effectively extinguished the myth that star talents will flock to LA above all else. the death of jerry buss, the
insane legacy extension on kobe's contract, and the fact that the lakers are a lottery team this season feeds further into the notion that things aren't so stable in lakerland, no matter how brief their downturn may end up being in reality...
in this age of hyper media scrutiny, i honestly think the relative anonymity provided by a small market like sacramento must feel like a bit of a comfort to someone like gay, who's been trashed endlessly since memphis' new ownership group became hell bent on trading him no matter what they received in return. fans wanted to run him out of town in toronto. they'd be ready to run him out of town if he wasn't able to win in LA. but in sacramento, it's all smiles and positivity and nba 3.0 and new arena rah-rah'ing despite the fact that the kings' remain in the western conference's basement. it's often difficult to get the good players here, but once they're here, the fans are endlessly appreciative, and there's a new regime in town that's clearly player-oriented. we'll see what happens, but i'm not nearly as worried about the ominous threat of lakerland as i would have been in the past. i just hope it doesn't cost an arm and a leg if gay opts out and the kings re-sign him...