Minnesota Sports Forum

thedoper wrote:

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.

Q12543 wrote:Where I disagree with Khans, Doper, Pork, and Duke is that somehow Rubio needs to "keep this up" in order to continue to be worthy of being our starting PG.

What Rubio does need to "keep up" is his engagement in the offense, taking what the defense gives him (i.e. not passing up wide open shots, only to give the ball to someone with an even worse shot), and generally being the team's floor leader. His dis-engagement earlier this year affected his play on both sides of the ball and I don't think that was entirely his fault (which I outlined earlier).

What we don't need Rubio to "keep up" is scoring 15+ PPG with efficiency. Obviously it would be great if he could do that, but it's not a necessity. We need Wiggins to get back to being the Wiggins we saw in February. We need Shabazz to get back to being the Shabazz that actually makes an outside shot once or twice a game. We need KAT to keep being KAT. And we need the team defense to keep playing well.

thedoper wrote:

Q12543 wrote:Where I disagree with Khans, Doper, Pork, and Duke is that somehow Rubio needs to "keep this up" in order to continue to be worthy of being our starting PG.

What Rubio does need to "keep up" is his engagement in the offense, taking what the defense gives him (i.e. not passing up wide open shots, only to give the ball to someone with an even worse shot), and generally being the team's floor leader. His dis-engagement earlier this year affected his play on both sides of the ball and I don't think that was entirely his fault (which I outlined earlier).

What we don't need Rubio to "keep up" is scoring 15+ PPG with efficiency. Obviously it would be great if he could do that, but it's not a necessity. We need Wiggins to get back to being the Wiggins we saw in February. We need Shabazz to get back to being the Shabazz that actually makes an outside shot once or twice a game. We need KAT to keep being KAT. And we need the team defense to keep playing well.

So you think Wiggins and Shabbaz need to improve but not Ricky? Sounds a little one note too Q. All teams have inconsistent performers. Having more consistent shooting from all positions helps, and Ricky bucking his career trend and hitting shots has been part of our recent success. Ricky has played much better in the last 20 games, we all hope he keeps it up.

Q12543 wrote:

thedoper wrote:

Q12543 wrote:Where I disagree with Khans, Doper, Pork, and Duke is that somehow Rubio needs to "keep this up" in order to continue to be worthy of being our starting PG.

What Rubio does need to "keep up" is his engagement in the offense, taking what the defense gives him (i.e. not passing up wide open shots, only to give the ball to someone with an even worse shot), and generally being the team's floor leader. His dis-engagement earlier this year affected his play on both sides of the ball and I don't think that was entirely his fault (which I outlined earlier).

What we don't need Rubio to "keep up" is scoring 15+ PPG with efficiency. Obviously it would be great if he could do that, but it's not a necessity. We need Wiggins to get back to being the Wiggins we saw in February. We need Shabazz to get back to being the Shabazz that actually makes an outside shot once or twice a game. We need KAT to keep being KAT. And we need the team defense to keep playing well.

So you think Wiggins and Shabbaz need to improve but not Ricky? Sounds a little one note too Q. All teams have inconsistent performers. Having more consistent shooting from all positions helps, and Ricky bucking his career trend and hitting shots has been part of our recent success. Ricky has played much better in the last 20 games, we all hope he keeps it up.

Ricky needed to improve over the start of the season, absolutely. But he turned that situation around 25+ games ago as Thibs decided to start utilizing him in the way Ricky was used to. What we have seen more recently is a whole different level of play not seen throughout his career. I don't think he needs to keep that up in order to continue being a solid starting PG.

Q12543 wrote:Where I disagree with Khans, Doper, Pork, and Duke is that somehow Rubio needs to "keep this up" in order to continue to be worthy of being our starting PG.

What Rubio does need to "keep up" is his engagement in the offense, taking what the defense gives him (i.e. not passing up wide open shots, only to give the ball to someone with an even worse shot), and generally being the team's floor leader. His dis-engagement earlier this year affected his play on both sides of the ball and I don't think that was entirely his fault (which I outlined earlier).

What we don't need Rubio to "keep up" is scoring 15+ PPG with efficiency. Obviously it would be great if he could do that, but it's not a necessity. We need Wiggins to get back to being the Wiggins we saw in February. We need Shabazz to get back to being the Shabazz that actually makes an outside shot once or twice a game. We need KAT to keep being KAT. And we need the team defense to keep playing well.

khans2k5 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:Where I disagree with Khans, Doper, Pork, and Duke is that somehow Rubio needs to "keep this up" in order to continue to be worthy of being our starting PG.

What Rubio does need to "keep up" is his engagement in the offense, taking what the defense gives him (i.e. not passing up wide open shots, only to give the ball to someone with an even worse shot), and generally being the team's floor leader. His dis-engagement earlier this year affected his play on both sides of the ball and I don't think that was entirely his fault (which I outlined earlier).

What we don't need Rubio to "keep up" is scoring 15+ PPG with efficiency. Obviously it would be great if he could do that, but it's not a necessity. We need Wiggins to get back to being the Wiggins we saw in February. We need Shabazz to get back to being the Shabazz that actually makes an outside shot once or twice a game. We need KAT to keep being KAT. And we need the team defense to keep playing well.

I really disagree with this take. If we want to win at a high rate he needs to keep this up. This is how you win games. You defend the other team well and your top ball handlers score the ball and dish the ball to shooters. You are reducing your margin for error when you say he doesn't need to keep this up because that puts it all on Zach, Wiggins and Towns and they weren't winning a lot when that was the case earlier this year. Now that our primary ball handler is dropping 20 a game in addition to moving the ball we are beating good teams a lot more often. Funny how that works. If Ricky drops this level and goes back to where he was, why is the team going to significantly improve and not play the way they were before? We finally see the team play really well because of Towns and Ricky playing like All-Stars and you think Ricky dropping back to where he's been in the past is good enough when we have never won more than 50% of our games when he plays that way. That doesn't make sense to me. He finally plays the way many of us have preached we need from our top ball handler and we become a team to be reckoned with in our conference. Funny how that worked out. And then you think he doesn't need to stay that way for the team to keep playing at this high level and I just call BS because we haven't played at this level since the KG days until he started playing like this.

Q12543 wrote:Khans, I call your disagreement and raise it by one!

If Ricky's scoring is "the key", then how come we we've pretty much been ranked #10 offensively throughout the entire season, including his early struggles? Or how about our 9th rated offense in 2013-14 when Ricky averaged a whopping 9.5 points per game?

Yes, he needs to be a threat to score when totally ignored - we agree there. No, he doesn't need to go out and get 15 or 20 PPG for our offense to be effective. The proof is in the numbers.

Now if you want to talk about winning games, that pretty much starts and ends with the defense. It's been our #1 problem for the past umpteen years.

EDIT: It looks like Monster beat me to the punch on the reason for our turnaround.