Ricky Quotes

[worldK]

Pork chop-
Ideally that would be the case, guys like curry,lawson,holiday and rondo makes 10-12 m a year. That would be a category I would put rubio in but keep in mind that when those players sign their deals, Their teams didnt just signed an inferior player to a better contract. That would factor into the negotiations.

Those 4 pgs either have a legit all star making big bucks on their team or where at the time, the highest signing of their respective teams in the past few years. Pek just signed his 60m 5 yr deal a year ago and he is certainly not more important than rubio in the scheme of things.

[Porckchop]

Im not quite ready to put Ricky at those pgs level yet.
Hes a great floor general with elite passing skills but hes been outplayed by pgs all season long. Hes an opportunistic defender but he cant keep a pg in front of him to save his life. I get that the help D has been terrible but to be considered a good defender u cant always rely on others . This goes without speaking to his offensive deficiencies, which are many. 10-12 mil is way overpaying hoping he reaches his potential. IMO

[AbeVigodaLive]

PorkChop... I was going to rip the comparison to Curry. There is no comparison between Rubio and Curry at this time. Curry is the far superior player.

But he wasn't THIS good at the time he signed the deal. In fact, it was after he missed 40 games and looked to have some lingering ankle injuries. Turns out the Warriors got a bargain.


[Note: Still don't think Rubio is in Curry's class, but it's not as laughable as I first thought if you look at it that way.]

[worldK]

PorkChop... I was going to rip the comparison to Curry. There is no comparison between Rubio and Curry at this time. Curry is the far superior player.

But he wasn't THIS good at the time he signed the deal. In fact, it was after he missed 40 games and looked to have some lingering ankle injuries. Turns out the Warriors got a bargain.


[Note: Still don't think Rubio is in Curry's class, but it's not as laughable as I first thought if you look at it that way.]

Exactly abe. When curry, rondo, lawson and holiday got their extentions, they have not yet become the player they are right now. If cyrry didnt sign that extention he would be max money player right now, same with rondo. Holiday became an all star after he signed that extention and lawson wasnt even a full time starter when he signed his. So they were signed in part because of their potential. Same here with rubio. He is not on that level yet but he is close and the potential is there to be on par with those 4.

[Brandon BassHole [enjin:8183321]]

Brandon Jennings got 3 years 24 million Thats along the lines of what Rubio deserves. 4 years 33 Million. or 5 Years 42 Million.

[AbeVigodaLive]

PorkChop... I was going to rip the comparison to Curry. There is no comparison between Rubio and Curry at this time. Curry is the far superior player.

But he wasn't THIS good at the time he signed the deal. In fact, it was after he missed 40 games and looked to have some lingering ankle injuries. Turns out the Warriors got a bargain.


[Note: Still don't think Rubio is in Curry's class, but it's not as laughable as I first thought if you look at it that way.]

Exactly abe. When curry, rondo, lawson and holiday got their extentions, they have not yet become the player they are right now. If cyrry didnt sign that extention he would be max money player right now, same with rondo. Holiday became an all star after he signed that extention and lawson wasnt even a full time starter when he signed his. So they were signed in part because of their potential. Same here with rubio. He is not on that level yet but he is close and the potential is there to be on par with those 4.

The one rub with that is I don't know if Rubio has shown the improvement over the first 3 years to make the leap that others have.

I know, I know... people love his last 3 weeks or so (still a lot of uneven play)... and somebody will come back with "But he has career highs in a lot of categories."

But he hasn't made any significant improvements.

(Per 36)
Rookie: 11.2 ppg / 4.4 / 8.6 / 35.7% / 2.3 stl
Year 2: 12.9 ppg / 4.9 / 8.9 / 36.0% / 2.9 stl
Year 3: 10.3 ppg / 5.1 / 9.7 / 37.6% / 2.8 stl

I see a guy who has actually been very consistent in his inconsistency over his first 3 years. Sorry, but shooting 37.6% vs. 36% isn't enough for me. Adding one more assist isn't enough either. The GREAT or even VERY GOOD players show more than marginal improvement over their first 3 seasons.

Personally, I dug Rubio more last season. I'll always remember him destroying John Wall's will to play in the 4th quarter as he stole the ball from him about 4 times. Speaking of John Wall... he might actually offer us a glimmer of hope. He was largely stagnant for his first 2 years in the league, then he came on strong in the second half last year (shortly after being destroyed by Rubio). He's hit another level this season, even adding 3 pointers to his game. Enough so, that he looks worthy of that huge contract he signed.

[Coolbreeze44]

In the market place, it's not about what you should get, it's about what you can get. So he's worth whatever someone is willing to pay him. And that is certainly going to be north of $10 million.

[thedoper]

In the market place, it's not about what you should get, it's about what you can get. So he's worth whatever someone is willing to pay him. And that is certainly going to be north of $10 million.

That was really my point. And it is clear that our franchise will far for that bargaining tactic hook, line and sinker. If I were a betting man I would say Ricky gets 13 per.

[Lipoli390]

Several points:

1. Ricky's market value goes beyond his stats. He has a flare and persona that add to his market value.

2. Ricky's value to the Wolves is particulary substantial because of the burden he bears as the sole ball-handler in our starting lineup and the statistical impact his presence has on the team's success.

3. The fact that Flip gave$12 million per year to a center who has a far smaller impact on the team's success and can't be counted on to stay healthy makes it particularly difficult to expect to resign Ricky for anything less than that amount, regardless of position. Actually, the PG position is probably the most important position in the NBA today.

Based on these three considerations alone, I would expect that the Wolves will have to offer $12 million per year for five to keep Ricky here. But the case for paying Ricky that amount is even more compelling when you look more closely at his statistical prowess as a player and his value to this team. Consider the following article, which takes a much more intelligent and revealing look at Ricky's statistcal value than one can get from focusing primarily on shooting stats or on the shallow PER system created by a moderately intelligent sportswriter:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-hidden-value-of-the-nba-steal/

A few additional points that underscore Ricky's value not only now but down the road:

1. Compared to other NBA PGs, Ricky ranks 4th in assists, 3rd in rebounding and 2nd in steals. As one who has watched a lot of Wolves games live, I'd add that Ricky's assist stats significantly understate his prowess as a facilitator of our offense. His assist stats don't reflect the quality of his assists -- i.e., getting the ball to the right player at the right time in precisely the right place to maximize that player's chances of scoring. Further, those stats don't reflect what he does to set up the offense and create scoring opportunities for his teammates even when he doesn't actually get the assist.

2. Even Ricky's glaring weakness - shooting -- has improved markedly since the all-star break after he spent time with a shooting coach. In the month of March, Ricky hs been shooting 45% from the field and 36.8% from behind the arc. He's averaged 4.3 free throw attempts and hit nearly 83% of those attempts. Actually he's been doing a good job of getting to the line and hitting a high percentage of his fouls shots all season.

3. Ricky is a gamer with a great attitude. He's a guy who guts it out and plays every game even when banged up. He plays as many minutes as he's called upon to play and always plays extremely hard. We have too few players like that on our team as it is. He's also a team player who puts his team's success above his own. And you never see him complain publicly about his teammates or even about some of Adelman's absurd decisions on fourth quarter playing time.

As others have said, Flip screwed up our payroll by paying $5 million per year on long term deals to two perennial bench players -- Corey and Chase -- while also paying over $7 million per year to a 31 year old one-way player who has no other offensive skill (passing, rebounding or ball-handling) to complement his laudible shooting ability and who's defense is not just bad but horrible. Neverthe less, signing Ricky for $12 million per year will still be doable. I do think that ultimately the Wolves will end up trading Pek to free up some salary space down the road and avoid the luxury tax.

And even at $12 million per year for four or five years, I don't think Ricky will extend here unless this team significantly improves next season compared to this one. I think we can improve significantly and Ricky's ability to improve his own shot will be part of the team's improvement. But Flip will have to make some shrewd moves this summer, including moves that change the roster and the hiring of a new head coach.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

Superb post, Lipoli, and I couldn't agree more with your premise...that Ricky's value to the Wolves goes far beyond traditional stats. Especially if there is much substance to the interesting 538 article about the relative value of steals and blocks (although I have to admit I don't fully understand the model he uses to come up with his hypothesis...can anyone help here?).

Unfortunately there's good and bad news here. The good news is we have a PG that has elite potential given the breadth of his contributions. the bad news is we're going to have to pay for that.