monsterpile wrote:I am a vegetarian is there some sort of pork chop equivalent we can use? Meat to me is personally gross (not judging) so in full disclosure I can never go full Pork chop. Lol
I'll go 45% pork chop meat substitute but like others it could escalate quickly. I love Rubio but have been worried about his injury history for a couple years. This year is key. Last night even in a game that he didn't exactly play all that well he showed why people really like him. He was playing his butt off doing whatever he could to try and win and was fired up.
For me, next year is key rather than this year. While winning is nice this year, its not critical to the team's long term success. So if Ricky's injuries lead us to fall short and keep our draft pick, its ok. Next year we will be in absolute playoff mode, so Ricky's health does matter. I think if Ricky's health is a huge issue beyond this year, then we have to at least bring in a borderline starting caliber point guard. As someone pointed out earlier, Curry had the early injury plagued label. Deron Williams who has battled injuries is having a very nice year so far. Maybe a year of Kander will do wonders.
To be fair, waiting until year 6 of Ricky to know for sure seems like one helluva long wait...
Good point. What choice do the Wolves have at this point especially when Ricky has really seemed to want to stay here? The Wolves were supposed to be getting a more finished product after having to wait for him to come over in the first place...then he got hurt and...the hope of Rubio is sorta like the round and round this franchise has been going through during the re-re-re-rebuild.
Note: I wanted to respond to this point yesterday but with the board being weird I never got around to it.
Q12543 wrote:
Ricky has already proven that he can quarterback a high-powered offense. Let's rewind two years ago to the starting lineup of Rubio-Martin-Brewer-Love-Pekovic. Their offensive rating (points per 100 possessions) that season was 112.4. Guess which other NBA starting lineups had a better offensive rating?
No one.
I don't blame Rubio's shooting on the Wolves bad offense that's more on Sam and his overwhelming focus on this team playing defense...
As for Rubio not being able to be a championship PG it's not exactly optimal however Dallas won a championship with Jason Kidd who basically only jacked up 3 pointers to score. Q was ready for Rubio to go that route for maybe at least a year. I've always said Rubio was too young to settle for that. Rubio has some decent 3 point shooting percentages plus FT% and was good with catch and shoot 3's in Europe so him being able to be a reasonably good 3 point shooter and play a Kidd role is somewhat reasonable. The first issue is whether he can stay healthy enough to do anything. If Rubio has enough talent around him and stays healthy he may be just fine.
Why are we giving Rubio credit for things that happened 6 years ago... while overlooking what's happened over the past two... or even 4+ years for that matter?
He CAN'T shoot. He remains the worst shooting (starter) in modern NBA history. He's in his 5th year. That's who he is. Saying he's going to get better is fool's gold at this point. That's not to say he's a worthless player. Or, a bad player. Obviously, he does other things well enough to justify some of those on/off splits and to earn a $56M payday. He's good in a lot of ways, but is he good enough?
We can't assume he's going to improve anywhere at this point. After this much time and with injuries, it's probably just as likely that he gets worse than better. Rubio is who he is.
And the question on the table is whether that's good enough or not...
monsterpile wrote:I am a vegetarian is there some sort of pork chop equivalent we can use? Meat to me is personally gross (not judging) so in full disclosure I can never go full Pork chop. Lol
I'll go 45% pork chop meat substitute but like others it could escalate quickly. I love Rubio but have been worried about his injury history for a couple years. This year is key. Last night even in a game that he didn't exactly play all that well he showed why people really like him. He was playing his butt off doing whatever he could to try and win and was fired up.
For me, next year is key rather than this year. While winning is nice this year, its not critical to the team's long term success. So if Ricky's injuries lead us to fall short and keep our draft pick, its ok. Next year we will be in absolute playoff mode, so Ricky's health does matter. I think if Ricky's health is a huge issue beyond this year, then we have to at least bring in a borderline starting caliber point guard. As someone pointed out earlier, Curry had the early injury plagued label. Deron Williams who has battled injuries is having a very nice year so far. Maybe a year of Kander will do wonders.
To be fair, waiting until year 6 of Ricky to know for sure seems like one helluva long wait...
Good point. What choice do the Wolves have at this point especially when Ricky has really seemed to want to stay here? The Wolves were supposed to be getting a more finished product after having to wait for him to come over in the first place...then he got hurt and...the hope of Rubio is sorta like the round and round this franchise has been going through during the re-re-re-rebuild.
Note: I wanted to respond to this point yesterday but with the board being weird I never got around to it.
That's the thing. Where is his value elsewhere? You can omit a lot of teams right off the bat since there are already so many good PGs in the league. Then, take some more teams off the list if they put more stock in scoring PGs, or guys who can finish or guys who can hit 3s. Put Rubio on a team with a ball-dominant wing and where does he fit? (Think Houston, Cleveland, Indiana)
So you're left with literally a handful of teams where they're cool with a very polarizing player who does some things at an elite level and other things at a league-worst level. The market might be pretty slim if you look at it that way.
So I think the Wolves have no other choice but to wait this out. Hope Rubio shows consistent flashes of healthy, sustained play. And if the guy in charge (whoever that is or will be) doesn't believe Rubio is the answer... act on it the moment you can because there might not be many chances to do so down the line.
Q12543 wrote:
Ricky has already proven that he can quarterback a high-powered offense. Let's rewind two years ago to the starting lineup of Rubio-Martin-Brewer-Love-Pekovic. Their offensive rating (points per 100 possessions) that season was 112.4. Guess which other NBA starting lineups had a better offensive rating?
No one.
This is true, on the other hand at that season we were 1-13 in close games and Ricky was not playing 4th quarters for a reason, he was historically bad in 4th quarters so Adelman played J.J. instead. .
If Adelman was playing JJ in the 4th quarter, then shouldn't J.J. be the person to blame for that 1-13 record in close games? When I go to NBA.com and look up "clutch" stats from that year, Barea was the only guy on the team that had a negative Player Impact Estimate (PIE) in those clutch situations. JJ was -6.6. Rubio was positive 5.4.
This comes up every so often. Clutch stats are bogus IMO. They are based on small samples of data. If you want to know the effect a player had on the team's performance, there are much better gauges to use. Even if you choose to believe in "Clutch" - you can't ignore 30 minutes of a player's performance in a game and judge them exclusively on the final 3. Would only of those 14 games have even been close had Rubio not played? There's plenty of data out there to show Rubio makes the team better.
Watching the games from the 2014 season tells me that Rubio was part of the problem with that team. Not THE problem. But part of the problem. I don't think it's fair to absolve the PG from blame from an underperforming team.
Remember he went about a month or some insane amount of time without scoring a field goal in the 4th quarter. Seriously, that's insane... whether he was getting quality minutes or not.
Q12543 wrote:
Ricky has already proven that he can quarterback a high-powered offense. Let's rewind two years ago to the starting lineup of Rubio-Martin-Brewer-Love-Pekovic. Their offensive rating (points per 100 possessions) that season was 112.4. Guess which other NBA starting lineups had a better offensive rating?
No one.
I don't blame Rubio's shooting on the Wolves bad offense that's more on Sam and his overwhelming focus on this team playing defense...
As for Rubio not being able to be a championship PG it's not exactly optimal however Dallas won a championship with Jason Kidd who basically only jacked up 3 pointers to score. Q was ready for Rubio to go that route for maybe at least a year. I've always said Rubio was too young to settle for that. Rubio has some decent 3 point shooting percentages plus FT% and was good with catch and shoot 3's in Europe so him being able to be a reasonably good 3 point shooter and play a Kidd role is somewhat reasonable. The first issue is whether he can stay healthy enough to do anything. If Rubio has enough talent around him and stays healthy he may be just fine.
Why are we giving Rubio credit for things that happened 6 years ago... while overlooking what's happened over the past two... or even 4+ years for that matter?
He CAN'T shoot. He remains the worst shooting (starter) in modern NBA history. He's in his 5th year. That's who he is. Saying he's going to get better is fool's gold at this point. That's not to say he's a worthless player. Or, a bad player. Obviously, he does other things well enough to justify some of those on/off splits and to earn a $56M payday. He's good in a lot of ways, but is he good enough?
We can't assume he's going to improve anywhere at this point. After this much time and with injuries, it's probably just as likely that he gets worse than better. Rubio is who he is.
And the question on the table is whether that's good enough or not...
I agree with your points however I I think you missed the point I was making. My point is I am comparing him to old man Jason Kidd who almost literally shot 3 pointers and FTs. I am not arguing Rubio will improve overall as a shooter I am suggesting 3 point shooting which he has some sort of track record (yeah some from years ago) of being decent at something he can do shooting 3'a I am not suggesting it's something that will happen but I also think him being able to hit coach and shoot 3's seems some sort of reasonably hopeful thing to wish for and was something he actually was good at years ago. It's not somethings brand new like becoming a good shooter AND a scorer which yeah seems pretty damn unlikely.
Jason Kidd couldn't shoot and he was a perennial all star. Kidd started off in Rubio territory for his first 3 years and climbed up to around 40%. If Rubio can stay healthy I'd expect his shooting does improve to around 40%. Despite his shooting, he helps our offense by getting others better looks and is an excellent defender and is a great teammate. We just have to hope Kander works his magic and he stays healthy when we make our run starting next year. In either case, we should be looking to pickup a quality backup in free agency and work on developing Tyus. We got 3 young talents to build around and a healthy Ricky is a bonus.
Q12543 wrote:
Ricky has already proven that he can quarterback a high-powered offense. Let's rewind two years ago to the starting lineup of Rubio-Martin-Brewer-Love-Pekovic. Their offensive rating (points per 100 possessions) that season was 112.4. Guess which other NBA starting lineups had a better offensive rating?
No one.
I don't blame Rubio's shooting on the Wolves bad offense that's more on Sam and his overwhelming focus on this team playing defense...
As for Rubio not being able to be a championship PG it's not exactly optimal however Dallas won a championship with Jason Kidd who basically only jacked up 3 pointers to score. Q was ready for Rubio to go that route for maybe at least a year. I've always said Rubio was too young to settle for that. Rubio has some decent 3 point shooting percentages plus FT% and was good with catch and shoot 3's in Europe so him being able to be a reasonably good 3 point shooter and play a Kidd role is somewhat reasonable. The first issue is whether he can stay healthy enough to do anything. If Rubio has enough talent around him and stays healthy he may be just fine.
Why are we giving Rubio credit for things that happened 6 years ago... while overlooking what's happened over the past two... or even 4+ years for that matter?
He CAN'T shoot. He remains the worst shooting (starter) in modern NBA history. He's in his 5th year. That's who he is. Saying he's going to get better is fool's gold at this point. That's not to say he's a worthless player. Or, a bad player. Obviously, he does other things well enough to justify some of those on/off splits and to earn a $56M payday. He's good in a lot of ways, but is he good enough?
We can't assume he's going to improve anywhere at this point. After this much time and with injuries, it's probably just as likely that he gets worse than better. Rubio is who he is.
And the question on the table is whether that's good enough or not...
I agree with your points however I I think you missed the point I was making. My point is I am comparing him to old man Jason Kidd who almost literally shot 3 pointers and FTs. I am not arguing Rubio will improve overall as a shooter I am suggesting 3 point shooting which he has some sort of track record (yeah some from years ago) of being decent at something he can do shooting 3'a I am not suggesting it's something that will happen but I also think him being able to hit coach and shoot 3's seems some sort of reasonably hopeful thing to wish for and was something he actually was good at years ago. It's not somethings brand new like becoming a good shooter AND a scorer which yeah seems pretty damn unlikely.
1. He's never even been an average 3 point shooter in the NBA.
2. Kidd was a shell of himself offensively by the end. 8 / 4 / 8 in the championship season and that was with him basically only taking wide open three point set shots as one of the last offensive options. 2/3 of his shots were three pointers. He was no threat offensively. The Wolves should demand more from Rubio than that. Rubio can give them more than that.
3. But I get your optimism. We're all hoping Rubio shows improvement somewhere because everybody knows how important he is for the Wolves.
TeamRicky wrote:Jason Kidd couldn't shoot and he was a perennial all star. Kidd started off in Rubio territory for his first 3 years and climbed up to around 40%. If Rubio can stay healthy I'd expect his shooting does improve to around 40%. Despite his shooting, he helps our offense by getting others better looks and is an excellent defender and is a great teammate. We just have to hope Kander works his magic and he stays healthy when we make our run starting next year. In either case, we should be looking to pickup a quality backup in free agency and work on developing Tyus. We got 3 young talents to build around and a healthy Ricky is a bonus.
Kidd's first 5 seasons:
38.5%
38.1%
40.3%
41.6%
44.4%
Rubio's first 5 seasons:
35.7%
36.0%
38.1%
35.6%
34.3% (still early though)
I get the comparison. But, it's not like Rubio is destined to follow the same career arc as a 1st ballot HOFer just because they're both lousy shooters. Why do we keep comparing Rubio to Jason Kidd but it's blasphemy to compare him to a guy like Brevin Knight... a guy who remained the decent but flawed player he always was?
[Note: I think Rubio is better than Knight. But conversely, I don't think he's close to Kidd.... hence why I don't understand why he's compared to only one of them.]
Jason Kidd had only 4 seasons of his 14 seasons they kept shooting stats on basketball reference below 50% shooting from 0-3ft. Rubio has yet to have 1 season in his 5 year career to date above 50%. Teams with Kidd on them worked because he could finish at the basket. It's been the same story with Ricky for 5 years. He either needs to start finishing at the basket or knocking down his mid-range shots and he's still doing neither. People rag on Kidd's 3pt shooting early in his career also, but he only had 3 years below 32% from 3 in his 19 year career. Ricky has been below 32% in 3 of his 5 years in the league. Kidd had 12 better 3pt shooting years over Ricky's highest of 34% his rookie year. I think it's time the Kidd comparisons stopped because he was just a much better player than Ricky is. In Kidd's 5th year in the league he jumped to 8 win shares and averaged 17/11/7/2 on 44/36/75 splits. Ricky is just nowhere near that level of production. Ricky does not appear to have made any jump at all, let alone a jump to all-nba like Kidd made in his 5th year.
