Would you take Jahlil Okafor if you had the chance?

[WildWolf2813]

LST, I hate to break it to you, but this team is not winning 35 games.

Yes, Rubio is their most important player, but Ricky Rubio is not LeBron James or Kevin Durant or even Chris Paul. He is not good enough to make, say, a 15-20 game difference in wins and losses by himself. If he was as good as you say he is, the combination of him and Love (a top 10 player in his own right) would have won 50+ games last season.

I love Ricky as much as everyone here, but this roster was constructed like a house of cards. We all knew injuries are an inevitable part of the game and that some of our better players (like Pek and Martin) were injury-prone. It was only a matter of time before we would have to rely too much on 1st and 2nd year players - it just happened a bit earlier in the season than we all thought - but it was going to happen eventually. It would have been unbelievably lucky for our vets to stay healthy for the entire season. And once you have to rely on rookies and 2nd year guys to carry the load, you're in trouble.



At this point, I would be giddy with the 25 wins I originally predicted. I'm afraid that's in jeopardy too....

Thing is, he IS that important to us. I always found it damning how Kevin Love played some of the best basketball of his life after Ricky got hurt and the team could only muster a 5-22 record the rest of Ricky's rookie year. I see what's happening now. I don't think it's a coincidence. When it's that hard for this team to function without Ricky, that says a lot.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

Yeah, I agree with you, wildwolf. Derrick Rose is a great player, but the Bulls don't seem to lose that much when he is out. The Wolves, however, are a completely different team without Ricky...or at least without the Ricky of the first four games of the season. I went through the schedule from the Orlando game until the first week of January (when I hope that Ricky will be back), and I find ten games that we win with him and lose without him...starting with that Orlando game. Q said Ricky isn't LeBron, Durant or Paul, but I think that Ricky's impact on his team is greater than any of those three except LeBron.

I hear Q's point that Ricky wasn't good enough to win 50 paired with Love, but I disagree with the premise. Rubio and Love was never an effective pairing in Adelman's system, because too much of the offense ran through Love. It allowed Kevin to put up terrific individual stats, but didn't take full advantage of Ricky's PG skills. Flip clearly saw this, and although we're required on this board to always make the small sample size disclaimer, I still think the post-Adelman Ricky that we saw in the first four games of the year demonstrated what a healthy Rubio is going to consistently give us.

[AbeVigodaLive]

"It was projected by most to be a Western Conference bottom feeder when fully healthy."

While this is true, a lot of the same people who projected that were beginning to backtrack on that one after four games. Stein even said perhaps he underrated us in one of his power rankings. So had we stayed relatively healthy, or really just had Rubio stayed healthy, the Wolves likely would be hovering near .500 basketball even to this point.

Don't know about that. The West has 10 teams that could conceivably win 50 games. NOBODY had the Wolves in that group even after the team's "blistering" 2 - 2 start.

Even at their "best" in that ridiculously small sample size, the team is not even close to the West playoffs teams. Plus, you have a surprising Sacramento squad that's at least credible. And the Nuggets have shown signs of life. Somehow.

In the crazy West, a .500 team is a bottom feeder. And I'm certain that this team wasn't a .500 team even when healthy.

[AbeVigodaLive]

Yeah, I agree with you, wildwolf. Derrick Rose is a great player, but the Bulls don't seem to lose that much when he is out. The Wolves, however, are a completely different team without Ricky...or at least without the Ricky of the first four games of the season. I went through the schedule from the Orlando game until the first week of January (when I hope that Ricky will be back), and I find ten games that we win with him and lose without him...starting with that Orlando game. Q said Ricky isn't LeBron, Durant or Paul, but I think that Ricky's impact on his team is greater than any of those three except LeBron.

I hear Q's point that Ricky wasn't good enough to win 50 paired with Love, but I disagree with the premise. Rubio and Love was never an effective pairing in Adelman's system, because too much of the offense ran through Love. It allowed Kevin to put up terrific individual stats, but didn't take full advantage of Ricky's PG skills. Flip clearly saw this, and although we're required on this board to always make the small sample size disclaimer, I still think the post-Adelman Ricky that we saw in the first four games of the year demonstrated what a healthy Rubio is going to consistently give us.

What the fuck?!?!

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

While I can't dispute the eloquence of your point :),abe, let's dig a little deeper.

Are you telling me you don't see a huge difference between the Wolves in the first week of the season and the subsequent Rubio-less Wolves? They don't look at all like the same team to me, and that to me defines his importance. Do you really think we lose to the Pelicans by almost 50 if Ricky is playing? Come on... And yes, I recognize that other Wolves have been injured too, but only Ricky was out when we collapsed against the Magic.

Now, take a look at how the Clippers played last January when Chris Paul went down. Some Clipper fans were saying that the team might have even played better during that 19-game stretch. They held on to win in Dallas in the game in which he got hurt, lost in San Antonio the next night, and then went on to win 5 in a row before losing in Indiana. Overall they went 13-6 during the time he was out, including a winning record on the road. Chris Paul is a great player and I'm a huge fan, but the Clippers hardly missed a beat during his absence. Now, explain to me why you think it's preposterous to say losing Rubio hurts the Wolves more than losing Paul hurts the Clippers.

It's difficult to do the same kind of analysis with Durant, because before this year he just hasn't missed many games, and this year Westbrook has been out the entire year too. But I did note that OkC won on the road by 18 in the one game he missed last year, and only beat hapless Philly by 12 when he returned the next night. Not quite like losing to the Pellies by 50 a week after taking the Memphis Grizzlies down to the buzzer a week previous, huh?

I have watched a lot of the Cavs' games this year because I enjoy watching a good train wreck, and they are a bad basketball team when LeBron is off the court. I suspect they would suffer a colossal non-Rubio Wolves-like drop off if he were to get injured, so that's why I wasn't prepared to say Rubio is more important to the Wolves than LBJ is to the Cavs. We don't know.

Okay, your turn...

[Hicks123 [enjin:6700838]]

I definitely lean towards the Abe side of this argument....and I thought he summed it up fairly eloquently in his 3 word statement above.

That being said, I believe both sides are simply looking at this from a different angle. When Abe and I read the statements like Ricky is more important that anyone but LBJ, the first thought is that you are insane for even mentioning Rubio as a similar talent to the other guys in question (i.e. Paul, Durant). If that is truly your stand, then it is completely preposterous, ridiculous and all those types of words.

But instead, I think LST and others are simply trying to convey Rubio's importance TO OUR SPECIFIC TEAM. In a way, I agree with this. Based on early reads, he may be the most important piece to holding this team together. The whole problem with realizing this potential fact is that it really worries me that a mid-tier talent like Rubio is the driver of this team. LST mentions how the Clips managed without Paul....you know why.....because their supporting cast is talented enough to absorb Paul's temporary loss. If Rubio was on the Clips, the loss of him as a player would certainly be less than that of losing Paul. All this being said, I guess you could then argue in a convoluted way that Rubio is more important than Paul.......not really, but it works if you twist things around a bit.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

I agree with your points, Hicks. Certainly on the eloquence (but not the persuasiveness) of abe's short comment. And also on your interpretation of my comment...that it was about the relative impact of Rubio on the Wolves vis-à-vis the named superstars' impact on their teams. It would be preposterous to say that Ricky is in the same league as Durant, Paul and James...they are universally recognized superstars, and Ricky is not. But impact on their team is a vastly different topic, and empirical evidence says that losing Rubio is much more harmful to the wolves than losing Paul is to the Clippers. The Clippers last year won close to 70% of their games whether Paul was in the lineup or not, so it's difficult to conclude he had a significant impact on them. On the other hand, the Wolves this year completely fell apart after Ricky went down, just like they fell apart the rest of his rookie season after his knee injury (21-22 pre-injury, 5-18 post-injury)...despite the continuing presence of their supposed "superstar".

Superstar qualities and production, and impact on a team, are different things, as the Rubio/Paul example clearly shows.

[Porckchop]

This team hasnt won more games than it's lost in 10 years so to say with any kind of certainty that Rickyr minus it's past best player makes this team a .500 ball club is just wishful thinking at this point. Lets set the bar a lil lower first. Maybe stay healthy and shoot 40% for a full season . Then we can start thinking a lil bigger.

[bleedspeed177 [enjin:6603232]]

Draft news

http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2014/12/5/7338967/emmanuel-mudiay-rumors-injury-china-nba-draft-age-limit

[bleedspeed177 [enjin:6603232]]

Internationals.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/2015-nba-draft-s-top-10-international-prospects-002940858.html