Minnesota Sports Forum

Carlos Danger wrote:Injuries happen. And not just to Rubio. Total games played the last two seasons:

109 - Bennett
108 - Budinger
107 - Martin
104 - Rubio
101 - Garnett
89 - Pekovic
75 - Bazz

If you're going to go after one guy as being "injury prone" then why not go after all of them? Rubio isn't even the worst offender. It's Bazz, Pek and KG.

I've gone after Pek plenty, and Flip for re-signing right along with Ricky. As Khan mentioned, we have 26 mil tied up in the two of them, and I am getting tired of seeing them on the pine. Ricky is extremely important to our team (more so than Pek), and we need to either see him on the court full time or cut bait!

SJM, How would you suggest we cut bait with Pek?

Injuries suck. When Ricky signed that contract extension, he just played 82 games! No one knew at the time he would get the Ankle Injury From Hell.

sjm34 wrote:

TheSP wrote:Let me see if I understand. If Rubio posts pictures hanging out with friends but not of him rehabbing then hanging with friends must be all he did this off-season? Is he expected to rehab 24/7? Maybe it's just me, but it seems like vacation pictures are the ones I would post.

Let me see if I can help you understand my point.

Has Rubio shown any improvement over his career with the wolves?

If you exclude last season's 22-games, many of which Ricky played at less than full strength, he actually did improve his overall efficiency as a player over his first three seasons.

At this point, I'm far less concerned about whether Ricky has improved his jumper or not. I just want the guy healthy. We need someone - anyone! - that can play some defense on the floor. Ricky is in a completely different universe defensively compared to everyone else on the roster, except KG.

khans2k5 wrote:

Carlos Danger wrote:Injuries happen. And not just to Rubio. Total games played the last two seasons:

109 - Bennett
108 - Budinger
107 - Martin
104 - Rubio
101 - Garnett
89 - Pekovic
75 - Bazz

If you're going to go after one guy as being "injury prone" then why not go after all of them? Rubio isn't even the worst offender. It's Bazz, Pek and KG.

KG is 39. The fact that he can play at all in the NBA still at PF no less is crazy. Pek is 6'10 300lbs most of which is in his upper body so any lower body injury is going to be a real issue. We also have a replacement for Pek in Towns. Bazz is a bench player who simply isn't relied on nearly enough to complain about his injury history. Ricky is the piece that makes this team go. He's the foundation we've built our house of cards on. Both sides of the ball go to shit when he's not in the game. He's 25 about to enter his prime. We simply can't afford him to go down so when he goes down even for a couple pre-season games with a quad strain it's a big issue because of how much it sets back the rest of the team. Injuries to Ricky have the biggest negative effect on the team which is why he gets ripped the most for being injured so much. Ricky is the only core piece on that list and if he has 1 more year lost to injury he just has to be taken off our list of core players moving forward (that would be 3 years out of 5 lost to injury).

KG is your starting PF. Pek would be your starting Center (if healthy). Martin could still be the starting SG. Many count on Bazz as a key 6th man off the bench. All of those guys are important. All have missed significant time similar to Rubio. It is what it is. Injuries are going to happen. All you can do is try to build in depth and hope not all injuries happen at same time like last year.

Carlos Danger wrote:Injuries happen. And not just to Rubio. Total games played the last two seasons:

109 - Bennett
108 - Budinger
107 - Martin
104 - Rubio
101 - Garnett
89 - Pekovic
75 - Bazz

If you're going to go after one guy as being "injury prone" then why not go after all of them? Rubio isn't even the worst offender. It's Bazz, Pek and KG.

Just because other people are also injury prone, doesn't mean Ricky himself isn't also injury prone. And really KG is 40 and has played a million games in his career, and Pek is just too big. Biggest difference is though, that KG is just a minor 20 minute a game half the season guy, and Towns is clearly the center of the future and not Pek.

With Ricky, he's a big ass part of what the Wolves are, nobody really expects Tyus Jones to be this teams future starting PG, at least for a few years.

I also know that those others guys have been ripped plenty for missing time.

Q12543 wrote:SJM, How would you suggest we cut bait with Pek?

Injuries suck. When Ricky signed that contract extension, he just played 82 games! No one knew at the time he would get the Ankle Injury From Hell.

I never said anything about cutting bait on Pek (mainly because we can't), but I would never have re-signed Pek to a five year deal considering nobody offered him anything or even brought him in for a visit.

In reference to Ricky improving, I guess the .476 TS% jumping to a whopping .491 in two years make you technically correct, but all three years have been well below the league average. Of course cherry picking out the 22 games of last season doesn't really make sense since he has been coming off an injury for half his career.

While I agree that Ricky does other things very well that don't necessarily show up in the stats, that still doesn't help the wolves win games when he can't stay healthy. If he took advantage of that downtime on the injuries to improve, it might make it more palatable.

Carlos Danger wrote:Injuries happen. And not just to Rubio. Total games played the last two seasons:

109 - Bennett
108 - Budinger
107 - Martin
104 - Rubio
101 - Garnett
89 - Pekovic
75 - Bazz

If you're going to go after one guy as being "injury prone" then why not go after all of them? Rubio isn't even the worst offender. It's Bazz, Pek and KG.

Wait. Aren't there quite a few DNP - Coaches Decision in there, too? What's next, saying Jeff Adrien isn't as durable as Rubio because he's played fewer games (yes, that's the Q bat signal)...

As Khans notes... Rubio is the team's foundation. Yet, because of two key injury-plagued seasons and one season where he inexplicably was largely sat down in the 4th quarter... Wolves fans don't know for certain what kind of player he can become.

Statistically, he's the same guy as he was as a rookie. That's not terrible by any means. When healthy, he can be an average PG in this league... doing some things great... other things really poorly. Even it out and you have Rubio.

Is that a foundational piece? Maybe. More importantly though... that's a question we could ask IF he hadn't missed A LOT of time over 2 of his 4 seasons. As it is.... we can't even get to those kind of big-picture declarations or affirmations until the guy stays on the court so we can see if there's more to his game than he's shown thus far.

It's very rare to see a guy be as consistent (statistically leveling off) as Rubio has for as long as he has (four years) while at the same time inciting so much optimism and promise that he could be more.

Carlos Danger wrote:

khans2k5 wrote:

Carlos Danger wrote:Injuries happen. And not just to Rubio. Total games played the last two seasons:

109 - Bennett
108 - Budinger
107 - Martin
104 - Rubio
101 - Garnett
89 - Pekovic
75 - Bazz

If you're going to go after one guy as being "injury prone" then why not go after all of them? Rubio isn't even the worst offender. It's Bazz, Pek and KG.

KG is 39. The fact that he can play at all in the NBA still at PF no less is crazy. Pek is 6'10 300lbs most of which is in his upper body so any lower body injury is going to be a real issue. We also have a replacement for Pek in Towns. Bazz is a bench player who simply isn't relied on nearly enough to complain about his injury history. Ricky is the piece that makes this team go. He's the foundation we've built our house of cards on. Both sides of the ball go to shit when he's not in the game. He's 25 about to enter his prime. We simply can't afford him to go down so when he goes down even for a couple pre-season games with a quad strain it's a big issue because of how much it sets back the rest of the team. Injuries to Ricky have the biggest negative effect on the team which is why he gets ripped the most for being injured so much. Ricky is the only core piece on that list and if he has 1 more year lost to injury he just has to be taken off our list of core players moving forward (that would be 3 years out of 5 lost to injury).

KG is your starting PF. Pek would be your starting Center (if healthy). Martin could still be the starting SG. Many count on Bazz as a key 6th man off the bench. All of those guys are important. All have missed significant time similar to Rubio. It is what it is. Injuries are going to happen. All you can do is try to build in depth and hope not all injuries happen at same time like last year.

Lumping KG at 39 into a conversation about injuries is ridiculous. THe guy was an Iron Man for the majority of his career. He rolled an ankle and was back in playing ten minutes later.

We have clearly moved on from Pek by drafting Towns, and I would guess our next move will be to replace Ricky. Hoping that injuries won't be a problem for injury prone players is what has kept the wolves at the bottom of the league for the last decade. Health should be a major consideration when signing players in the future, as well as who we draft.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Carlos Danger wrote:Injuries happen. And not just to Rubio. Total games played the last two seasons:

109 - Bennett
108 - Budinger
107 - Martin
104 - Rubio
101 - Garnett
89 - Pekovic
75 - Bazz

If you're going to go after one guy as being "injury prone" then why not go after all of them? Rubio isn't even the worst offender. It's Bazz, Pek and KG.

Wait. Aren't there quite a few DNP - Coaches Decision in there, too? What's next, saying Jeff Adrien isn't as durable as Rubio because he's played fewer games (yes, that's the Q bat signal)...

As Khans notes... Rubio is the team's foundation. Yet, because of two key injury-plagued seasons and one season where he inexplicably was largely sat down in the 4th quarter... Wolves fans don't know for certain what kind of player he can become.

Statistically, he's the same guy as he was as a rookie. That's not terrible by any means. When healthy, he can be an average PG in this league... doing some things great... other things really poorly. Even it out and you have Rubio.

Is that a foundational piece? Maybe. More importantly though... that's a question we could ask IF he hadn't missed A LOT of time over 2 of his 4 seasons. As it is.... we can't even get to those kind of big-picture declarations or affirmations until the guy stays on the court so we can see if there's more to his game than he's shown thus far.

It's very rare to see a guy be as consistent (statistically leveling off) as Rubio has for as long as he has (four years) while at the same time inciting so much optimism and promise that he could be more.

Games played. I can't make it any more simple than that for you to understand. If the coach didn't play you, then you didn't play in a game AKA help your team. To say that Wolves fans don't know what kind of player Rubio can be is probably false. I think most understand he's a pass first Floor General with good court vision, facilitating and defense. That's the player he's going to be. Those hoping he'll turn into a shooter or scorer are probably going to continue to be disappointed. That's not who he's going to be. As far as being injury prone, I listed half of last year's team as an example to show that lots of guys missed similar (or worse) time than Rubio. It is what it is. Injuries happen. You don't cut good players because they had a bad injury unless it becomes chronic as in Pek's case. Rubio's injuries thus far have not turned chronic. As far as I know he's fully recovered from both the knee and now the ankle. He's scheduled to play on Friday. The World is not ending. Everything is going to be fine.

sjm34 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:SJM, How would you suggest we cut bait with Pek?

Injuries suck. When Ricky signed that contract extension, he just played 82 games! No one knew at the time he would get the Ankle Injury From Hell.

I never said anything about cutting bait on Pek (mainly because we can't), but I would never have re-signed Pek to a five year deal considering nobody offered him anything or even brought him in for a visit.

In reference to Ricky improving, I guess the .476 TS% jumping to a whopping .491 in two years make you technically correct, but all three years have been well below the league average. Of course cherry picking out the 22 games of last season doesn't really make sense since he has been coming off an injury for half his career.

While I agree that Ricky does other things very well that don't necessarily show up in the stats, that still doesn't help the wolves win games when he can't stay healthy. If he took advantage of that downtime on the injuries to improve, it might make it more palatable.

1. Could you provide a link that shows he didn't work on his game or is the fact he didn't post picture of said work enough?

2. What exactly do you feel a basketball player should work on when he has a severe ankle injury? You cannot even work on your shot if you're not supposed to be running and jumping.

3. The previous off season he was said to have worked on his shot. It didn't improve much if at all, but he worked on it.