Robin Miller
08-21-2008, 08:03 PM
The Ricky Rubio Hoops Experience: He's snazzy but has a long way to go
Posted by Tim Kawakami on August 18th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
As always, before I launch my own scattered, shrieking nonsense about the
Ricky Rubio crescendo, a nod to the people who are actually reporting
on-site, riding the buses, going to the media availabilities and doing the
important stuff at the Olympics basketball tourney:
Ostler in the Chron got an up-close look says Rubio reminds him of Pete
Maravich.
Annie K in our own splended newspaper took a visit to a Spain game a few
days ago and said Rubio is a very exciting player and maybe the Warriors
should be interested when Rubio enters the draft as a sure-thing top-5 pick
in 2009 or 2010 .
They are not alone in the Rubio praise and clearly he is something special.
Rubio has been a hot name in world hoops circles for a while now, even
though he's only 17 and is currently a back up behind Jose Calderon, Rudy
Fernandez and Juan Carlos Navarro (and possibly one or two others-Spain has
a lot of guards).
So. how good is Rubio, really? In five years, when he's 22 and in the NBA,
will he be Steve Nash/Maravich special? Or Sebastian Telfair/Marko Jaric
special?
I'm thinking the likeliest probability is that Rubio turns out to be less
like Nash and more like a super-version of Luke Ridnour, and any way you
slice that up, that doesn't spell absolute stardom.
My caveat: The most I've seen of Rubio was against Team USA, and any meeting
against a motivated Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Chris Paul,
Deron Williams, Jason Kidd, et al. is not conclusive for a 17-year-old
shaggy-haired wunderkind.
My double-caveat: Rubio is super-young and you never precisely know what any
teenager, particularly a ball-handler, is going to be like in four or five
years.
My take: Rubio is good, but he does not yet project into superstardom. He
does not yet seem ready to play in the NBA, though that is, I realize, a
high bar to set for a teenage point guard. He seems like, in a parallel
reality, he'd be a very good to excellent college ball-handler right now,
with the chance to be a pretty good NBA player by the time he's 20.
Obviously, college will not be his route, but I think you know what I'm
saying: If he was about to go to college, he could help a team win a
national title but you wouldn't predict multiple NBA titles for him right
away. (As we did Tim Duncan and could imagine with Dwight Howard and LeBron
James.)
I don't think Rubio will be, in the long run, as good as Derrick Rose will
be. I think he could be better than Russell Westbrook or Michael Conley,
Jr., but it's not 100%. I don't think he'll be as good as Chris Paul or
Deron Williams. There.
START YELLING AT ME RIGHT NOW RUBIO FAN CLUB!!
Anyway. Rubio shows flashes and, by all indications, has great hands, better
basketball instincts and a flair for making plays-you can't teach that stuff
and if you have it at 17, you'll always have it.
But Stephon Marbury, at 17, was supposed to be one of the greatest point
guards who ever lived. More than a decade later, we're still waiting.
Actually, we've stopped waiting-Marbury ain't it.
At 17, Nash was a national also-ran, certainly not projected as a future
two-time MVP. At 17, Monta Ellis was going crazy in Mississippi high school
play, but. who knew what he'd do when he was all grown up?
Coming out of high school, Ty Lawson was thought to be a sure-fire top-five
NBA draft pick whenever he left North Carolinia-two years later, he's still
at Carolina and falling lower and lower on the big board with every
successive day.
Coming out of high school, Baron Davis was considered a potential top-10
pick in a year or two and an eventual stud NBA lead guard-and that's exactly
what happened.
Conclusion: You just don't know about the teenager-to-NBA transition for
ball-handlers, unless the proof is overwhelming, as it was for a teenager
named Kidd back in the day in the East Bay.
Obviously, bigger players are easier to judge when they're young because
their skills remain about the same, only the refinement changes. For
instance: Howard was always better than Emeka Okafor, LeBron was always
incredible, Kobe Bryant was always a mid-sized whirlwind who could play
wing/point guard/whatever.
For guys under 6-5, and Rubio is about 6-3, it's different. It's harder.
They develop their skills in random ways-sometimes they blossom out of
nowhere, sometimes they just get stuck at age 23 or 24 and never get any
better.
Their careers are less dependent on strength and physical dominance and
tethered to subtler things like court vision, speed through the lane,
leadership, coach-friendliness, system-friendliness, health and shooting
ability.
With guards, especially lead guards, you just don't know unless they display
overwhelming abilities.
I'm saying that, unless Rubio sets off fireworks in the next few days in
Beijing-starting with Wednesday's quarterfinal game against Croatia-he has
not overwhelmed us with proof of obvious greatness.
You can't just say: He'll be great no matter what, like you could say with
Kidd or Kobe at similar ages.
-Problem: Rubio is playing 15.5 minutes per game in the Olympics, and
averaging 5 points. That is not quite projectable for imminent Maravichian
fireworks.
I'm just not sure about Rubio's shooting rage. Again, he's young and very
talented and he has put up huge numbers in his Spanish League outings, so he
could develop a big-time shot, of course. But it'd be nice to see him
display something of a shot, a fall-away jumper, a gutty three-pointer.
something. against top-notch opponents.
Maravich could've scored 25 a night in the NBA when he was 17. Yes,
definitely.
Kobe didn't have a killer 'J' as a teenager, but you could tell that he
would, eventually. Kidd didn't have a jumpshot in college. and he never got
one.
Monta Ellis didn't have a great jumpshot as an NBA rookie at 20, but you
could see the possibility of a whole lot of scoring in the near future.
-Positive point: Rubio leads Spain in steals during this tournament, by far,
including his absolute thievery of LeBron in the backcourt over the weekend.
That was a Bird-style steal-great eyes, great hands, marvelous anticipation.
Rubio proved to me he can play NBA defense just with that one play and that
is no small thing. He won't show up and be Sarunas Jasikevicius, getting
destroyed every time he sets foot on an NBA court. He won't be Marbury, who
couldn't be bothered with defense.
-Problem: Rubio hasn't shown a marked ability to blow past larger defenders.
I know it's tough to judge a teenager on his match-up vs. the Redeem Team
because when Kobe, Paul, Wade and the others are gnashing their teeth and
barking, I don't know who exactly would get past them.
Well, I do know one: Patty Mills, the St. Mary's guard who is getting large
minutes for Australia and went past Paul twice in a game leading up to the
Games.
Mills gets another shot at Team USA-and Team USA at him-in Wednesday's
quarterfinals. Let's see if Mills can do again what Rubio could not.
Mills is only 20-so he's not ancient himself, and he's making quite a name
for himself; plus, he can shoot from deep.
-Problem: Rubio is currently being represented by NBA power agent Dan Fegan,
which doesn't disqualify Rubio from super calculations, but it does not
help.
Fegan is a master of pump-up hype, as he did with Yi Jianlian two summers
ago-and Yi has been a big stiff in this tournament so far. (Just ask Yao.)
Rubio is young, so who knows. But I've noticed that many players who end up
picking Fegan tend not to be the blue-collar, anything-for-the-team types.
They're the me-first, get-me-mine, get-me-outta-here types.
For examples I point you to: Yi, Shawn Marion, Rafer Alston, Anderson
Varejao. (Jason Richardson is a good-guy client of Dan's, I must point out.)
So. It's exciting to see a young player like Rubio-so much to like at such a
young age.
But I've heard a lot of things about a lot of young guards through the
years. I've heard enough to know that, unless the guy is Jordan or Kobe or
Kidd, we just have no idea, at 17, if he's going to be a lock NBA superstar.
Posted by Tim Kawakami on August 18th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
As always, before I launch my own scattered, shrieking nonsense about the
Ricky Rubio crescendo, a nod to the people who are actually reporting
on-site, riding the buses, going to the media availabilities and doing the
important stuff at the Olympics basketball tourney:
Ostler in the Chron got an up-close look says Rubio reminds him of Pete
Maravich.
Annie K in our own splended newspaper took a visit to a Spain game a few
days ago and said Rubio is a very exciting player and maybe the Warriors
should be interested when Rubio enters the draft as a sure-thing top-5 pick
in 2009 or 2010 .
They are not alone in the Rubio praise and clearly he is something special.
Rubio has been a hot name in world hoops circles for a while now, even
though he's only 17 and is currently a back up behind Jose Calderon, Rudy
Fernandez and Juan Carlos Navarro (and possibly one or two others-Spain has
a lot of guards).
So. how good is Rubio, really? In five years, when he's 22 and in the NBA,
will he be Steve Nash/Maravich special? Or Sebastian Telfair/Marko Jaric
special?
I'm thinking the likeliest probability is that Rubio turns out to be less
like Nash and more like a super-version of Luke Ridnour, and any way you
slice that up, that doesn't spell absolute stardom.
My caveat: The most I've seen of Rubio was against Team USA, and any meeting
against a motivated Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Chris Paul,
Deron Williams, Jason Kidd, et al. is not conclusive for a 17-year-old
shaggy-haired wunderkind.
My double-caveat: Rubio is super-young and you never precisely know what any
teenager, particularly a ball-handler, is going to be like in four or five
years.
My take: Rubio is good, but he does not yet project into superstardom. He
does not yet seem ready to play in the NBA, though that is, I realize, a
high bar to set for a teenage point guard. He seems like, in a parallel
reality, he'd be a very good to excellent college ball-handler right now,
with the chance to be a pretty good NBA player by the time he's 20.
Obviously, college will not be his route, but I think you know what I'm
saying: If he was about to go to college, he could help a team win a
national title but you wouldn't predict multiple NBA titles for him right
away. (As we did Tim Duncan and could imagine with Dwight Howard and LeBron
James.)
I don't think Rubio will be, in the long run, as good as Derrick Rose will
be. I think he could be better than Russell Westbrook or Michael Conley,
Jr., but it's not 100%. I don't think he'll be as good as Chris Paul or
Deron Williams. There.
START YELLING AT ME RIGHT NOW RUBIO FAN CLUB!!
Anyway. Rubio shows flashes and, by all indications, has great hands, better
basketball instincts and a flair for making plays-you can't teach that stuff
and if you have it at 17, you'll always have it.
But Stephon Marbury, at 17, was supposed to be one of the greatest point
guards who ever lived. More than a decade later, we're still waiting.
Actually, we've stopped waiting-Marbury ain't it.
At 17, Nash was a national also-ran, certainly not projected as a future
two-time MVP. At 17, Monta Ellis was going crazy in Mississippi high school
play, but. who knew what he'd do when he was all grown up?
Coming out of high school, Ty Lawson was thought to be a sure-fire top-five
NBA draft pick whenever he left North Carolinia-two years later, he's still
at Carolina and falling lower and lower on the big board with every
successive day.
Coming out of high school, Baron Davis was considered a potential top-10
pick in a year or two and an eventual stud NBA lead guard-and that's exactly
what happened.
Conclusion: You just don't know about the teenager-to-NBA transition for
ball-handlers, unless the proof is overwhelming, as it was for a teenager
named Kidd back in the day in the East Bay.
Obviously, bigger players are easier to judge when they're young because
their skills remain about the same, only the refinement changes. For
instance: Howard was always better than Emeka Okafor, LeBron was always
incredible, Kobe Bryant was always a mid-sized whirlwind who could play
wing/point guard/whatever.
For guys under 6-5, and Rubio is about 6-3, it's different. It's harder.
They develop their skills in random ways-sometimes they blossom out of
nowhere, sometimes they just get stuck at age 23 or 24 and never get any
better.
Their careers are less dependent on strength and physical dominance and
tethered to subtler things like court vision, speed through the lane,
leadership, coach-friendliness, system-friendliness, health and shooting
ability.
With guards, especially lead guards, you just don't know unless they display
overwhelming abilities.
I'm saying that, unless Rubio sets off fireworks in the next few days in
Beijing-starting with Wednesday's quarterfinal game against Croatia-he has
not overwhelmed us with proof of obvious greatness.
You can't just say: He'll be great no matter what, like you could say with
Kidd or Kobe at similar ages.
-Problem: Rubio is playing 15.5 minutes per game in the Olympics, and
averaging 5 points. That is not quite projectable for imminent Maravichian
fireworks.
I'm just not sure about Rubio's shooting rage. Again, he's young and very
talented and he has put up huge numbers in his Spanish League outings, so he
could develop a big-time shot, of course. But it'd be nice to see him
display something of a shot, a fall-away jumper, a gutty three-pointer.
something. against top-notch opponents.
Maravich could've scored 25 a night in the NBA when he was 17. Yes,
definitely.
Kobe didn't have a killer 'J' as a teenager, but you could tell that he
would, eventually. Kidd didn't have a jumpshot in college. and he never got
one.
Monta Ellis didn't have a great jumpshot as an NBA rookie at 20, but you
could see the possibility of a whole lot of scoring in the near future.
-Positive point: Rubio leads Spain in steals during this tournament, by far,
including his absolute thievery of LeBron in the backcourt over the weekend.
That was a Bird-style steal-great eyes, great hands, marvelous anticipation.
Rubio proved to me he can play NBA defense just with that one play and that
is no small thing. He won't show up and be Sarunas Jasikevicius, getting
destroyed every time he sets foot on an NBA court. He won't be Marbury, who
couldn't be bothered with defense.
-Problem: Rubio hasn't shown a marked ability to blow past larger defenders.
I know it's tough to judge a teenager on his match-up vs. the Redeem Team
because when Kobe, Paul, Wade and the others are gnashing their teeth and
barking, I don't know who exactly would get past them.
Well, I do know one: Patty Mills, the St. Mary's guard who is getting large
minutes for Australia and went past Paul twice in a game leading up to the
Games.
Mills gets another shot at Team USA-and Team USA at him-in Wednesday's
quarterfinals. Let's see if Mills can do again what Rubio could not.
Mills is only 20-so he's not ancient himself, and he's making quite a name
for himself; plus, he can shoot from deep.
-Problem: Rubio is currently being represented by NBA power agent Dan Fegan,
which doesn't disqualify Rubio from super calculations, but it does not
help.
Fegan is a master of pump-up hype, as he did with Yi Jianlian two summers
ago-and Yi has been a big stiff in this tournament so far. (Just ask Yao.)
Rubio is young, so who knows. But I've noticed that many players who end up
picking Fegan tend not to be the blue-collar, anything-for-the-team types.
They're the me-first, get-me-mine, get-me-outta-here types.
For examples I point you to: Yi, Shawn Marion, Rafer Alston, Anderson
Varejao. (Jason Richardson is a good-guy client of Dan's, I must point out.)
So. It's exciting to see a young player like Rubio-so much to like at such a
young age.
But I've heard a lot of things about a lot of young guards through the
years. I've heard enough to know that, unless the guy is Jordan or Kobe or
Kidd, we just have no idea, at 17, if he's going to be a lock NBA superstar.