Minnesota Sports Forum

PorkChop wrote:It's a fair thread to start up , no harm done. I've been watching the games and letting some sample size build before abandoning my thoughts on Ricky completely.
While I'm not completely sold I am enjoying his more aggressive play. Looking for his shot more is almost as important as getting his shooting % up. It's encouraging to see him missing shots but still putting them up . His improvement has indeed been a linchpin for this team and if this team is on the verge of breaking thru he is deserving of his share of the credit.

^^^^ Not Duke. ^^^^^

PorkChop wrote:It's a fair thread to start up , no harm done. I've been watching the games and letting some sample size build before abandoning my thoughts on Ricky completely.
While I'm not completely sold I am enjoying his more aggressive play. Looking for his shot more is almost as important as getting his shooting % up. It's encouraging to see him missing shots but still putting them up . His improvement has indeed been a linchpin for this team and if this team is on the verge of breaking thru he is deserving of his share of the credit.

Ah, we managed to coax Pork out of hiding! You're a good sport.

In terms of the team breaking through, I'm afraid we may be in for a sobering couple of weeks. The schedule simply does not get any easier. That Milwaukee loss hurt.

Q12543 wrote:

khans2k5 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

khans2k5 wrote:I'm still 100% full pork chop in regards to Ricky. 2 games isn't going to change that. He's played great lately I'll give him that, but until he does it for more than a home stretch of a season I'd still rather move on. Ricky's the veteran of this team and it took him the longest to find his stride with Thibs and you just can't have that from a vet. He's the one who needed to play like this from day 1 while the young pups learned how to play under Thibs and we'd probably be in a much better spot to land the 8 seed if that was the case.

Two games?! Here are his last 10 games:

Points - 11.8
Assists - 11.1
Rebounds - 5.9
Stls - 2.1
TOs - 3.3
TS% - 52.1%
Net rating - +13.4 - best on team

Those aren't necessarily perennial all-star numbers, but they are pretty damn good. The fact he's sporting the best net rating over that time period says a lot.

Perhaps a) being injured, b) not being utilized correctly by Thibs, and c) having trade rumors hang over his head all affected his play earlier in the year! All that stuff is now behind him since the ASB.

Why is it so hard to believe that he just sucked at the start of this year and it's his fault for not coming in ready after an Olympic summer? Shifting blame to another injury and blaming his coach for not using him properly when he is the primary ball handler who runs the show on the floor and blaming trade rumors that have been over his head for multiple years now. Excuses, excuses, excuses. He's the veteran player on this team. Enough excuses for Ricky. It's not acceptable for a veteran to take 42 games to start playing well. How many more years need to be thrown away because of injury or poor play for too long? 2 games, 10 games. What's it matter? We're digging ourselves out of a huge hole because it took 42 games to get to this level. I'm fine with the excuses for the 21 year olds and 1-2-3rd year players. Not so much with the decade long professional basketball players who don't show up to play for half a season.

Wow, you really are 100% Pork still.

I'm sure we'd be far better off with Ty Lawson!

Khans makes some valid points.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

khans2k5 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

khans2k5 wrote:I'm still 100% full pork chop in regards to Ricky. 2 games isn't going to change that. He's played great lately I'll give him that, but until he does it for more than a home stretch of a season I'd still rather move on. Ricky's the veteran of this team and it took him the longest to find his stride with Thibs and you just can't have that from a vet. He's the one who needed to play like this from day 1 while the young pups learned how to play under Thibs and we'd probably be in a much better spot to land the 8 seed if that was the case.

Two games?! Here are his last 10 games:

Points - 11.8
Assists - 11.1
Rebounds - 5.9
Stls - 2.1
TOs - 3.3
TS% - 52.1%
Net rating - +13.4 - best on team

Those aren't necessarily perennial all-star numbers, but they are pretty damn good. The fact he's sporting the best net rating over that time period says a lot.

Perhaps a) being injured, b) not being utilized correctly by Thibs, and c) having trade rumors hang over his head all affected his play earlier in the year! All that stuff is now behind him since the ASB.

Why is it so hard to believe that he just sucked at the start of this year and it's his fault for not coming in ready after an Olympic summer? Shifting blame to another injury and blaming his coach for not using him properly when he is the primary ball handler who runs the show on the floor and blaming trade rumors that have been over his head for multiple years now. Excuses, excuses, excuses. He's the veteran player on this team. Enough excuses for Ricky. It's not acceptable for a veteran to take 42 games to start playing well. How many more years need to be thrown away because of injury or poor play for too long? 2 games, 10 games. What's it matter? We're digging ourselves out of a huge hole because it took 42 games to get to this level. I'm fine with the excuses for the 21 year olds and 1-2-3rd year players. Not so much with the decade long professional basketball players who don't show up to play for half a season.

Wow, you really are 100% Pork still.

I'm sure we'd be far better off with Ty Lawson!

Khans makes some valid points.

Ricky struggled early and he certainly deserves some of the blame for those struggles. But to say that external factors had nothing to do with it and simply being a veteran is enough to overcome those factors is basically ignoring human nature.

- We are aware of the wrist injury early that actually kept him out of a few games. How much that lingered and affected his stroke and confidence, we don't really know. But it wouldn't be the first time in NBA history a player was impacted by a lingering injury.

- Thibs used Rubio in the exact opposite way most of his past coaches used him. He basically was in a caretaker role, bringing the ball up the court, organizing the initial offense, then scurrying to the corner as either Wiggins or LaVine took on a lot of the play making responsibility. To think that wouldn't affect his game is naive.

- And finally, Ricky is human too. The trade rumors that have hung over his head since this past offseason had to have been wearing on him.

Thibs started using Ricky in a more traditional way 25 or 30 games into the season. That's when he started to improve. He's picked it up an additional notch since the cloud of uncertainty was lifted after the trade deadline.

Gee, who would have thought that being put in a position to succeed and stabilizing one's work situation would lead to improved play!?

Fair enough, Q.

He's playing great now. Sucked balls before. He's in his 6th season as the veteran stabilizer on a super young team. Hopefully, he won't need the annual litany of excuses to justify poor stretches of play next season.

I believe it's happened in 5 of his 6 seasons in the league on this forum (and the previous one).

This is funny funny stuff, I don't come on here much anymore, because quite frankly it's the same stuff every thread. Wiggins has no motor, he won't be superstar, Tibs is the worst coach ever, he doesn't slap guys enough on the ass to encourage them. Very earth shattering stuff. And I suppose I was right there with my Rubio rants.

I'm very happy for Rubio, I can give him credit, he's been great the past couple weeks. But there's some irony here. My argument was you wouldn't win with a PG who was such a liability offensively, and there was quite a large sample size to say Rubio couldn't score. Then once he started to be more agressive and doing things he hasn't done in 6 years we start winning, Interesting...

I get it, all the Rubio backers feel the need to gloat, no problem, go for it. But this goes to Porks argument with Rubio, all the Rubiobos have been blinded a bit and think he's immune to criticism, which is craziness to me. But oh well. I give Rubio a lot of credit as well as Tibs, he didn't give him away. And I will say this, two weeks ago, the league established Rubio's value to be pretty low, evident by the trade offers we received.

Rubio has been in he league 6-7 years ago, I jumped off the wagon a couple years ago, I gave Rubio a solid 4 years. Most people on here gave Tibs 1-2 months before they were calling for his head, and quite frankly Tibs has a much better track record then Rubio.

I still question rather Rubio can keep this up or if he's the answer at PG, need to see a longer stretch of play like this before I'll say that.

This is funny funny stuff, I don't come on here much anymore, because quite frankly it's the same stuff every thread. Wiggins has no motor, he won't be superstar, Tibs is the worst coach ever, he doesn't slap guys enough on the ass to encourage them. Very earth shattering stuff. And I suppose I was right there with my Rubio rants.

I'm very happy for Rubio, I can give him credit, he's been great the past couple weeks. But there's some irony here. My argument was you wouldn't win with a PG who was such a liability offensively, and there was quite a large sample size to say Rubio couldn't score. Then once he started to be more agressive and doing things he hasn't done in 6 years we start winning, Interesting...

I get it, all the Rubio backers feel the need to gloat, no problem, go for it. But this goes to Porks argument with Rubio, all the Rubiobos have been blinded a bit and think he's immune to criticism, which is craziness to me. But oh well. I give Rubio a lot of credit as well as Tibs, he didn't give him away. And I will say this, two weeks ago, the league established Rubio's value to be pretty low, evident by the trade offers we received.

Rubio has been in he league 6-7 years ago, I jumped off the wagon a couple years ago, I gave Rubio a solid 4 years. Most people on here gave Tibs 1-2 months before they were calling for his head, and quite frankly Tibs has a much better track record then Rubio.

I still question rather Rubio can keep this up or if he's the answer at PG, need to see a longer stretch of play like this before I'll say that.

Can you imagine if we traded Rubio and he blew up like this? I don't even want to think about it.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Can you imagine if we traded Rubio and he blew up like this? I don't even want to think about it.

This is sort of a tough spot to be in. He's never played like this before. Is this the new Ricky moving forward or just a hot streak? At this pace he's the starting PG next year. What happens if he starts slow again? Is he right back on the block? Do you trade him during the summer if he keeps this up and his value is insanely high? It all comes down to whether you think this is sustainable or not. It's definitely a good but tough spot to be in.

Duke13 wrote:This is funny funny stuff, I don't come on here much anymore, because quite frankly it's the same stuff every thread. Wiggins has no motor, he won't be superstar, Tibs is the worst coach ever, he doesn't slap guys enough on the ass to encourage them. Very earth shattering stuff. And I suppose I was right there with my Rubio rants.

I'm very happy for Rubio, I can give him credit, he's been great the past couple weeks. But there's some irony here. My argument was you wouldn't win with a PG who was such a liability offensively, and there was quite a large sample size to say Rubio couldn't score. Then once he started to be more agressive and doing things he hasn't done in 6 years we start winning, Interesting...

I get it, all the Rubio backers feel the need to gloat, no problem, go for it. But this goes to Porks argument with Rubio, all the Rubiobos have been blinded a bit and think he's immune to criticism, which is craziness to me. But oh well. I give Rubio a lot of credit as well as Tibs, he didn't give him away. And I will say this, two weeks ago, the league established Rubio's value to be pretty low, evident by the trade offers we received.

Rubio has been in he league 6-7 years ago, I jumped off the wagon a couple years ago, I gave Rubio a solid 4 years. Most people on here gave Tibs 1-2 months before they were calling for his head, and quite frankly Tibs has a much better track record then Rubio.

I still question rather Rubio can keep this up or if he's the answer at PG, need to see a longer stretch of play like this before I'll say that.

This is a great post. Hardly troll worthy at all. His shooting has been unusually good. We all hope it holds up while he has the keys to the castle.