Minnesota Sports Forum

Posted: **Thu Jul 16, 2015 10:47 am**

Mikkeman... thanks for the research.

But there's A LOT of noise in those numbers which makes that sort of comparison largely irrelevant, don't you think?
Player ages. Roles. Fit. Teammates. Etc... on and on and on...

Posted: **Thu Jul 16, 2015 11:00 am**

AbeVigodaLive wrote:Mikkeman... thanks for the research.

But there's A LOT of noise in those numbers which makes that sort of comparison largely irrelevant, don't you think?
Player ages. Roles. Fit. Teammates. Etc... on and on and on...

coaches schemes

Posted: **Thu Jul 16, 2015 12:31 pm**

AbeVigodaLive wrote:For me the question has never been whether the Wolves are better with Rubio on/off the court. Just like that was never the question when Kevin Love was here.

The question is whether there are other PGs who could make that kind of difference... or an even greater difference.

I don't know. And that's odd after four years. Rubio is an enigma in this way. Because he does some things so well and other things so poorly... it's only natural that he's polarizing to some degree. I'm actually surprised he hasn't been more polarizing. Then again... I think this is the year (I think I said the same thing last season) where the organization has to figure out if Rubio has any growth in him.

Basically, it's been the longest basketball honeymoon I can remember.

I guess I'm of the belief that if one concludes he helps make the team better in a fairly significant way, than what else is there to really debate about the guy? How is he an enigma when over multiple scenarios and years he's made his team better in a statistically significant way? I think the data is pretty conclusive at this point. An improved shot/finishing will only make him even more positive. But the status quo is pretty damn good. I don't get the "enigma" label.

The REAL priority for this team is how Wiggins, Towns, Shabazz, and LaVine develop. If anything, having Rubio around will actually help accelerate this process because he's a natural leader and selfless pass-first PG.

Posted: **Thu Jul 16, 2015 12:51 pm**

Q12543 wrote:
AbeVigodaLive wrote:For me the question has never been whether the Wolves are better with Rubio on/off the court. Just like that was never the question when Kevin Love was here.

The question is whether there are other PGs who could make that kind of difference... or an even greater difference.

I don't know. And that's odd after four years. Rubio is an enigma in this way. Because he does some things so well and other things so poorly... it's only natural that he's polarizing to some degree. I'm actually surprised he hasn't been more polarizing. Then again... I think this is the year (I think I said the same thing last season) where the organization has to figure out if Rubio has any growth in him.

Basically, it's been the longest basketball honeymoon I can remember.

I guess I'm of the belief that if one concludes he helps make the team better in a fairly significant way, than what else is there to really debate about the guy? How is he an enigma when over multiple scenarios and years he's made his team better in a statistically significant way? I think the data is pretty conclusive at this point. An improved shot/finishing will only make him even more positive. But the status quo is pretty damn good. I don't get the "enigma" label.

The REAL priority for this team is how Wiggins, Towns, Shabazz, and LaVine develop. If anything, having Rubio around will actually help accelerate this process because he's a natural leader and selfless pass-first PG.

Would somebody like Darren Collison have been an upgrade too? Remember, these Wolves teams have been pretty bloody awful for the most part. So I think it's deeper than just "well, this crappy team is actually only mediocre when Rubio (and usually) Love plays" so he must be a good player.

That's why I most certainly think he's still an enigma. He might be one of the most polarizing guys in the league in that he has such sweeping highs and lows among key PG qualities. There aren't many guys who waver between "the best" and "the worst" in respective categories.

I think that's what makes Rubio difficult to gauge. Again... do I think he's good? Yes. I think the good stuff outweighs the bad. And more importantly, he's certainly better than anybody else the team has had at the position in recent years. Is that good enough?

I hope to find out this season. In the end, I think he is what he is. Basically, a middle-of-the-road starting PG... but one who can be exploited more than most by smart teams because his weaknesses are so glaring.

Posted: **Fri Jul 17, 2015 2:20 am**

AbeVigodaLive wrote:Mikkeman... thanks for the research.

But there's A LOT of noise in those numbers which makes that sort of comparison largely irrelevant, don't you think?
Player ages. Roles. Fit. Teammates. Etc... on and on and on...

That is the reason why I wrote guesses and that it looks like he is better than some other point guards.

But I think we cannot just ignore Rubio's on/off and net rating stats as statistical noise because they have been such a terrific already in several years. Even last year when Rubio was paired with NBA starter level power forward (Thad or KG), he had net rating of +6.0. To get better idea how good that is we can compare that to net rating of NBA teams. Only Golden State, Clippers and San Antonio had last year better net rating as a team. Bennett (+0.0) and especially Payne (-15.3) were last year so horrible that even Rubio couldn't make them to play efficient basketball.

In previous year Rubio had net rating +6.6. Only San Antonio, Clippers and OKC beat that as a team. Even more impressive were Rubio's numbers when he was paired with Love and Pek. That threesome had net rating of +11.1. If Wolves would have had even average bench 13-14, they would have been one of the top teams in West.

Posted: **Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:38 am**

Mikkeman wrote:
AbeVigodaLive wrote:Mikkeman... thanks for the research.

But there's A LOT of noise in those numbers which makes that sort of comparison largely irrelevant, don't you think?
Player ages. Roles. Fit. Teammates. Etc... on and on and on...

That is the reason why I wrote guesses and that it looks like he is better than some other point guards.

But I think we cannot just ignore Rubio's on/off and net rating stats as statistical noise because they have been such a terrific already in several years. Even last year when Rubio was paired with NBA starter level power forward (Thad or KG), he had net rating of +6.0. To get better idea how good that is we can compare that to net rating of NBA teams. Only Golden State, Clippers and San Antonio had last year better net rating as a team. Bennett (+0.0) and especially Payne (-15.3) were last year so horrible that even Rubio couldn't make them to play efficient basketball.

In previous year Rubio had net rating +6.6. Only San Antonio, Clippers and OKC beat that as a team. Even more impressive were Rubio's numbers when he was paired with Love and Pek. That threesome had net rating of +11.1. If Wolves would have had even average bench 13-14, they would have been one of the top teams in West.

not completely true. Those Wolves were terrible in the 4th quarter. Rubio's 18% shooting in the 4th quarter played a big part in that

Posted: **Fri Jul 17, 2015 10:34 am**

khans2k5 wrote:
PorkChop wrote:
Can u be called an elite defender when not once have u made 1st 2nd or 3rd team all defense? Elite shouldn't be thrown around so lightly. Rubio gets tagged with that word on here quite often .

He's only played enough games in one season to even qualify for those kind of accolades, let alone win one and there are better PG defenders out there. Nobody is saying Ricky is a top 3 defender in the league. That award goes to 3 PG's total in the league. There are more than 3 elite defending PG's in the league. He's played most of his career with Love and Pek as his help defenders in the PnR. Rose has played with the likes of Noah and Gibson. Gee, I wonder which set of bigs is better. Rose has played with Butler, Deng, Noah, Gibson, etc. Those guys are the reason they've been a top defending team in the league. Noah has been a consistent candidate for DPOY. How many of those has Ricky played with? Bigs just have a much bigger effect on a team's defensive effectiveness than guards same as guards have a bigger effect on team offense through their penetration and dishing.

Well said Khans

Also.. Chop, where did I say Rubio was an elite defender? I used the word elite in reference to rebounding. Granted I think it's at least debatable that he's an elite defender, but I definitely said "good defender".

Posted: **Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:43 am**

...but when Rubio does play, he is an elite defender by PG standards. That has been quantified.

Khans is right though that bigs generally have a larger impact on team defensive effectiveness, meaning a top 3 PF or C defender will have more impact on team defense than a top 3 PG defender.

Posted: **Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:09 pm**

Mikkeman wrote:
AbeVigodaLive wrote:For me the question has never been whether the Wolves are better with Rubio on/off the court. Just like that was never the question when Kevin Love was here.

The question is whether there are other PGs who could make that kind of difference... or an even greater difference.

I don't know. And that's odd after four years. Rubio is an enigma in this way. Because he does some things so well and other things so poorly... it's only natural that he's polarizing to some degree. I'm actually surprised he hasn't been more polarizing. Then again... I think this is the year (I think I said the same thing last season) where the organization has to figure out if Rubio has any growth in him.

Basically, it's been the longest basketball honeymoon I can remember.

We can try to do some guesses based on how Rubio's backups have performed in other teams.

Rubio had 14-15 Net rating -0.6
Mo had 14-15 Net rating -5.7 in Minnesota

Kemba had 14-15 Net rating -5.1
Mo had 14-15 Net rating +0.1 in Charlotte

Lillard had 13-14 Net rating +5.5
Mo had 13-14 Net rating +1.3 in Portland

Chris Paul had 11-12 Net rating +7.3
Mo had 11-12 Net rating -1.2 in Clippers

So if we assume that Mo's performance level has been roughly same during last 4 years, (maybe not totally valid since he has got older but based on PER last year was his best since 09-10), we can use that as a basis when comparing to another point guards.

Clearly it looks like that Rubio is much better than Kemba Walker whose team performed much better with Mo as their PG. Also it seems that difference between 11-12 CP3 and Mo was clearly bigger than difference between Rubio and Mo. But difference of 13-14 Lillard and Mo was pretty similar than difference between Rubio and Mo.

Since last year Rubio played so few minutes, it is maybe better to use previous year for comparing his performance.

Rubio had 13-14 Net rating +6.6
Barea had 13-14 Net rating -3.4 in Minnesota

Rondo had 14-15 Net rating -1.3 in Dallas
Barea had 14-15 Net rating +4.9 in Dallas

Based on this I would say that Rondo is currently clearly worse than Rubio. He was pretty bad fit for Dallas team, so maybe we should take comparison from some other year.

Kidd had 10-11 Net rating +3.1 in Dallas
Barea had 10-11 Net rating +5.8 in Dallas

I would say based on above numbers that it looks like Rubio is probably also better than 37 year old Kidd.

Good stuff Mikke

Posted: **Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:19 pm**

Q12543 wrote:
AbeVigodaLive wrote:For me the question has never been whether the Wolves are better with Rubio on/off the court. Just like that was never the question when Kevin Love was here.

The question is whether there are other PGs who could make that kind of difference... or an even greater difference.

I don't know. And that's odd after four years. Rubio is an enigma in this way. Because he does some things so well and other things so poorly... it's only natural that he's polarizing to some degree. I'm actually surprised he hasn't been more polarizing. Then again... I think this is the year (I think I said the same thing last season) where the organization has to figure out if Rubio has any growth in him.

Basically, it's been the longest basketball honeymoon I can remember.

I guess I'm of the belief that if one concludes he helps make the team better in a fairly significant way, than what else is there to really debate about the guy? How is he an enigma when over multiple scenarios and years he's made his team better in a statistically significant way? I think the data is pretty conclusive at this point. An improved shot/finishing will only make him even more positive. But the status quo is pretty damn good. I don't get the "enigma" label.

The REAL priority for this team is how Wiggins, Towns, Shabazz, and LaVine develop. If anything, having Rubio around will actually help accelerate this process because he's a natural leader and selfless pass-first PG.

To your point in bold, - exactly. Ricky can orchestrate with the best of them. A good maestro needs some superstars in the symphony. I'm fairly certain Wiggins is a guy we can count on - a guy who is going to make some All-NBA teams. Bazz is going to be a solid contributor but not an aircraft carrier. His health is what I worry about the most. The real key is Towns and Lavine. Towns we are just going to need to have some patience with. He may even underwhelm this year but that shouldn't be overly concerning provided we see improvement throughout the year. Zach is the guy I am most nervous about. I see unreal potential, but I worry if he has all the dominos stacked up right. When you think he needs to be more aggressive, he tends to back off or settle. Like when he has an inferior defender on him. And then sometimes when he needs to be in better control he seems to lose it. I want to see him play a ton this year, primarily at the 2, but at the 1 as well. I want to see him get a lot of easy baskets, and that's where Ricky comes in. Rubio can get you the necessary looks, but you have to be playing in harmony with him. Those two guys need to play a lot together.

Sorry for all the cheesy metaphors.

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