We asked Matt McHale of Bulls’ blog By The Horns (also part of the TrueHoop Network) to give us his expert take on big man Aaron Gray, who the Hornets acquired from Chicago on Monday in exchange for Devin Brown. McHale kindly obliged:
Aaron Gray didn’t see many minutes in Chicago, and there are reasons for that. Good ones. By all accounts, he’s a good guy and a hard worker, but the realities are harsh and inescapable. He’s big, but he’s also very slow. (Gray was recently legally declared “statue” by leading statue experts.) He can rebound, but he cannot score. (In a battle of Gray versus an empty gym, my money is on the empty gym.) He can bang on defense, but he tends to get into foul trouble against players who are faster or more skilled than he is. (In other words, just about everybody.)
Gray provides a beefy body and six fouls. That’s about it. His only go-to scoring move — other than an uncontested layup or dunk, usually via an offensive rebound — is a jump hook that typically clanks off the front of the rim. Honestly, he does a sturdy job on the boards, but his deficiencies in every other area far outweigh the four or five rebounds he can haul down in limited minutes.
Those words reinforce the popular opinion that the best part of the Devin Brown trade for New Orleans was the resulting starting spot left open for Marcus Thornton.
(Scary, unflattering photo of Gray via At The Hive.)