Midway through the 2012-13 regular season, the Memphis Grizzlies said goodbye to forward Rudy Gay and traded him to the Toronto Raptors in a three-team deal. Gay played for the Grizzlies for the first six-plus seasons of his NBA career and helped the franchise return to relevancy.
The Miami Heat, who were led by none other than their Big 3 at the time, went on to win the 2013 NBA title, but Gay seems to think that 2013 would’ve been the Grizzlies’ year if they’d kept him around.
Rudy Gay says the Grizzlies would’ve beaten the Heat in 2013 if he wasn’t traded
“With all due respect to that team, they won a championship… but I don’t think they could’ve beat us that year… That was our year.”
(🎥 @OutTheMudTL / @NBAMyke )
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— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) September 5, 2025
Even though Gay logged just 42 appearances with the Grizzlies in that regular season before he got traded, Memphis still went on to win 56 games and went 32-9 at home as well.
Plus, after the Grizzlies were one of the best teams in the West during the regular season, they went on to put together their deepest playoff run in franchise history in the 2013 NBA Playoffs.
Memphis reached the Western Conference Finals after it eliminated the Los Angeles Clippers and Oklahoma City Thunder in the opening two rounds of the playoffs. The Grizzlies did get swept by the San Antonio Spurs in the conference finals, but three of Memphis’ four losses came by 11 points or fewer, so maybe Gay would have swung some of those games the Grizzlies’ way.
Folks shouldn’t blame Gay for believing 2013 would have been the Grizzlies’ year if he had stuck around in Memphis, as the team enjoyed so much success in the playoffs that year without him. However, the fact that the Grizzlies got swept in the playoffs by a team that lost to the Heat in that year’s championship certainly doesn’t help his case.
Even if Gay had stayed with the Grizzlies, it can be agreed that they wouldn’t have stacked up to Miami on paper in terms of star power. The Heat employed three of the best players in the world at the time in LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
Ultimately, in the only reality that matters, Miami got the job done and won the 2013 title.