Former Archbishop Spalding star Rudy Gay retires after 17 NBA seasons

One of the best players to come out of the Baltimore basketball scene is calling it quits after 17 NBA seasons.

Rudy Gay, who first came to the attention of the basketball world as a standout player at Archbishop Spalding, announced his retirement from professional basketball Tuesday in an article in The Players’ Tribune. Gay scored 17,642 points in 1,120 games in a career that took him to Memphis, Toronto, San Antonio, Sacramento and Utah.

Gay, 38, has had many struggles in his NBA career, including injuries and playing for teams struggling to make the postseason. He spent most of his career in the shadow of generational power forwards like LeBron James and fellow Baltimore native Carmelo Anthony. He only made three playoff appearances, which he referenced in his essay: “I’d be lying if I said my career turned out exactly the way I wanted it to. Let’s be real. It didn’t happen.”

But Gay still largely lived up to the hype he generated in 2004 when he was a McDonald’s All-American and five-star recruit for the Archbishop Spalding Cavaliers. The eighth overall pick in the 2006 NBA Draft out of UConn, Gay finished third in Rookie of the Year voting with a strong first campaign with the Memphis Grizzlies.

Although he never made an All-Star team, Gay averaged 15.8 points and 5.6 rebounds as a 6-foot-8 forward during his career. He won two FIBA ​​gold medals in 2010 and 2014 as part of the USA team.

“These were the cards I was dealt,” Gay wrote. “And I can honestly tell you that I did everything I could with these cards. I may not have been the best player on the planet, but I really tried my best.”

Gay’s basketball career began at Essex when he played for Eastern Tech his first two seasons in high school, but he transferred to Spaulding in Severn as a junior, quickly becoming a star.

In June Gay appeared on The Adam Jones Podcast talking about his career and Baltimore’s basketball scene, which produced a number of strong prospects in the early 2000s: “I just remember it being extremely competitive. … Every game was a battle.”

His long professional career is one of the longest by a Baltimorean, just after Anthony’s 19 seasons in the NBA. Gay credited Anthony, who was drafted three years before him, for showing him the “blueprint” of how to get into the league from Baltimore.

“But when I was young? Man, I never said any of that to him,” Gay wrote of Anthony. “This is Baltimore! It’s a very competitive town, especially when you’re talking about basketball.”

Gay roots in Baltimore remain strong. He owns PickUp USA Fitness in Towson and is a Wizards rookie guard Bab Carrington (a St. Francis grad) is his third cousin.

In his essay, Gay expressed his enthusiasm for spending more time with his wife and two sons. But he’s also looking for his next pursuit off the court.

“As I see it, I have a lot of work ahead of me,” he wrote. “I just need to figure out exactly what that means. Maybe it’s public speaking, or media, or business. We will see.”