Ricky Rubio is going to be a Rajon Rondo. At 19, he has the potential to be better than Rondo. But he will never be able to compare with John Wall, Deron Williams, or CP3, he doesn't have that athleticism or selfish drive to dominate. To the selfishness to want to be better than everyone is what makes superstars and Rubio's play is extremely unselfish.
I think you are out of your mind. He hasn't even played his first NBA game and you are saying he will be a top 5-10 player of all time? Nutso. But everyone is entitled to their opinion. Good thing we never traded for Darius Miles.
So you're saying Ricky Rubio was so good he was able to make the talent difference between his Spain team and the USA team composed of Rose, Durant, Billups, Iggy and Odom? Yeah, Rubio's so good he makes LBJ look like Adam Morrison LOL just calm down son. Rubio will be good but at 19 years old, he's way too young to make an impact. If he goes in this year I expect him to be abused on D and average around 10 pts, 6 assists a game. Decent but not ground-breaking either.
Or Dejuan Blair. Or Luke Babitt, both of whom were overly hyped on this board despite their lack of athleticism and/or health issues.
This is coming from a dude who assured us repeatedly that NBA washout/failure Vasilis Spanoulis is a bona fide NBA all star - so I'm detecting a bit of a gimp fetish for mediterranean ball-handlers, with emphasis on the ball-handling part.
yeah, that's pretty good production but nowhere near the "future allstar" or "absolute steal which DM missed" other people here claimed him to be. Which is exactly my point here: Rubio can be pretty good for his rookie year, but I highly doubt he's gonna set the court on fire at age 19. I mean, if Rubio was really so good he was able balance the talent disparity between team USA and team Spain, if you put an NBA team around him he should be able to bring Minny a ring in his rookie year. Forget Miami or the Lakers, Wolves are the team to beat.
Originally Posted by jopatmc Hmmmm, Every time I have used stats to show VSpan should be getting minutes, somebody always wants to shoot it down by saying he hasn't played enough minutes for those stats to mean anything. VSpan haters can't have it both ways. If you can't use VSpan's stats positively, then you can't use them negatively. After all, he is playing garbage minutes with a bunch of scrubs, most of those statistics are derived while he is playing the 2 guard, and most of the time the ball is being dominated by JLIII running down and jacking. Also, if you gave Rafer Vspan's minutes, his statistics would look about the same because he has nobody to throw the ball to. You can't have it both ways. Either we use the stats or we don't. I'll make my argument either way. You want to pull out percentages, go check what percentage of the time Rafer draws fouls compared to VSpan. Go look and see that we are the least fouled team in the league and shoot less free throws than any other team in the association. Yeah, we take care of the bball. We make sure nobody touches it, because we jack up shots instead of being aggressive and getting to the hole. I just hope all you VSpan haters are still here when Rafer throws up a 3 for 17 performance in the close out game of our season as our opponent forces the ball out of McGrady's hands and doubles Yao in the post and we get 6 free throws for the entire game. I've got plenty of stats and visual evidence as well that we should be developing Spanoulis. I'll stand by my comments on VSpan. I STILL feel he should have been developed over letting Rafer play 40 every night and throw up those 3 for 17s we were stuck with until Van Gundy left town and Adelman replaced Rafer as soon he possibly could. VSpan may very well have saved Van Gundy his job if Van Gundy had handled him right. Adelman was calling the kid and begging him to change his mind and come back and play under him. I'll stack up my player valuations against anybody.
Absolutely ridiculous post. Rubio is so overrated it makes me sick. Good luck with him evolving to the NBA game where the stars actually play hard and teams have great chemistry cuz they play together for 82 games... When he starts ripping it up in the pros then go make a post about him, but don't hold your breathe until then. I'm not sayng he couldn't be a solid player, but all this hype is completely ridiculous, besides everyone knows Minnesota has about 10 point guards, I'd be willing to bet Johnny Flynn i has a better pro career.
Source? Why would Adelman be begging some scrub to come play for him when that scrub could be turned into an actual serviceable NBA player (Scola)?
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/4944139.html .....for the poster who thinks so high of Steve Francis
When is Rubio coming to the NBA? From what I've seen and read he plays great D and has very good court awareness. Makes great passes and sees plays before they unfold. If the rumors are true, Morey LOVES Rubio, I will trust his talent evaluation.
LOL, your statistical valuation of V-Span? Please tell me how that worked out for you - glad i get to dig out this advanced graphic again: Anyway, tell me more about this Adelman begging phone calls - last time I checked Spanoulis was out the door as salary cap filler for Jackie Butler in the Scola trade within 6 weeks of Adelman's hiring - maybe you have a transcript of these phone calls? Happy googling.
I've watched more tape on rubio than probably everyone on this board. My problem with the whole rubio mania is this, if you think youre great, come prove it. Jennings took a terrible franchise and got them in the playoffs. How old is he? Rose was the #1 pick and he took the bulls to the playoffs. How old was he?Lebron,bosh,carmello,durant were all doing their thing at rubio's age. Stop hiding behind the age and come ball. Garnett changed the wolves into a legit franchise at 19, come do the same.
Scroll up 3 posts above yours, Sam. I was advocating and am still advocating that VSpan was a better option at the point than Rafer. He needed minutes to get used to the NBA. He should have gotten a pile of minutes in preseason and ultimately he should have supplanted Rafer. It would have probably saved Van Gundy his job. After Van Gundy was let go and Adelman brought in, Morey, Adelman, and Yao all called VSpan and tried to convince him to return. They didn't trade VSpan until it was abundantly clear he wasn't coming back. Then Morey lined up a killer trade. Why does San Antonio make the trade sending away Scola. Because they were gonna lose Scola for nothing anyways. And they saw value in VSpan and felt if they could convince him to come over that they would get great value back for a player that was not going to play for them (Scola). But before that went down, the Rox were doing their best to assuage VSpan after Van Gundy butchered him up. But alas, VSpan's mother was ill, the whole experience in the NBA turned him off and the combination of wanting to be with his family and the bad experience in the NBA was enough to convince him to flee. It wasn't because he was such a terrible player. He was and is a very good point guard. He's still better than Rafer........by far. Now, if you are a real big boy, you will tell this board that Rafer was a better point guard than VSpan would have become with a little experience. And then we can all laugh our collective butts off over that stupidity.
Rafer was not bright, but alright. The problem is Gundy. He screwed VSpan. If Gundy had given all JL3's minutes to VSpan in that regular season, the Rockets probably would have seeded higher. If Gundy had played VSpan more in lieu of Head in the playoffs, Tracy Lamar might have not been a second round virgin. Of course, Gundy may also get to stay.
