Wojnarowski: Phoenix Suns in trade talks for Rudy Gay

According to Adrian Wojnarowski, the Phoenix Suns are interested in acquiring Rudy Gay from the Memphis Grizzlies.

The 26-year old Rudy Gay was re-signed to a maximum extension a year ago, and has 2 more years left on his contract after this season. The commitment would be: $16.4 million, $17.8 million and $19.3 million through 2014-15.

Gay has a career average of 17.9 points, 5.7 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game. He is only a 31% 3-point shooter over the past two seasons and 34% for his career.

Note that the points and rebounds are while playing on a very good team, with competition for those stats from Zach Randolph.

The troubling stat is the 3-point shooting, for a team that really needs it.

Here are Gay's stats from basketball-reference.com:

What would go back to Memphis is unknown, but the Suns can absorb only $6.3 million (cap space + $100,000) of the $16.4 owed to Gay this season.

So they must send out more than $10 million in salary back to Memphis in any deal.

According to Woj, the Grizzlies are particularly interested in Jared Dudley ($4.25 million this year) and future picks.

There's no framework of a possible deal in place, but the Grizzlies have expressed a strong desire that any package involving Gay include Suns forward Jared Dudley and future first-round draft picks, sources said.

In an effort to avoid paying luxury tax in the short term, as well as get off the $17.8 million and $19.3 million owed Gay in the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons, new Memphis management has aggressively shopped Gay. The Grizzlies have made proposals on Gay to several teams, front-office sources told Yahoo! Sports.

But where would that other $6 million come from? The assumption on Memphis trading Gay is that they want to reduce their future salary obligations, what with huge contracts to three other players on the books: Randolph, Gasol, Conley.

The Suns have (basically) expiring contracts in Wesley Johnson ($4.2 million), Shannon Brown ($3.5 million), Sebastian Telfair ($1.75 million) and a host of <1 million extras on the bench: Tucker, Garrett, Zeller. But sending out those expirings would seriously dent the cap space this summer.

Or it's possible that they could parlay a low future draft pick into Memphis eating Michael Beasley's contract (and then releasing him, and stretching the remaining $9 million guaranteed to him over 5 seasons).

What say you, Suns fans?

Is Rudy Gay that max contract you've been wanting for Christmas?

Update:

Rumor is quickly fizzling...

Vernon is a Memphis guy, so I'm wondering what assets the Grizzlies think they "need" to get back for an over-paid SF?

And then there's this, for those who believe a certain local reporter has the ear of Suns ownership (though they didn't listen to him on Beasley)...