Written by Sam Ekstrom
When Ricky Rubio finally came to Minnesota in 2011, he arrived with ample fanfare. The Spaniard was greeted by 200 well-wishers and team employees at the Minneapolis airport to welcome him to his new American home.
Rubio can now get comfortable in his local hacienda after signing a 4-year, $55 million extension Friday that will keep him in a Wolves uniform through 2018.
But with this new deal, Rubio enters a world where he’ll have a shorter leash, greater scrutiny and far higher expectations.
An early plateau
Think back to Year 1 of Rubio’s Timberwolves career. The young man had just reached the legal drinking age before his first regular season game at Target Center, and he proceeded to light the place on fire in a lockout-shortened 2011 season. Spectacular passing, transition alley-oops to Derrick Williams and a potent pick-and-roll with Kevin Love – the Wolves were fun to watch again.
The team was over .500 and eyeing the playoffs. Rubio was leading all rookies in assists, steals and minutes played, but more importantly, transforming the Timberwolves’ losing culture. “The floppy-haired, irrepressible young point guard changed the dynamic of a rebuilding team almost from the moment he set foot in Minnesota,” read an ESPN article in March of 2012. “His flashy, unselfish play galvanized his teammates, and his fun-loving nature has been an immediate draw at the box office.”
In the Timberwolves most highly anticipated game of the 2011-12 season, they hosted the Lakers on a Friday night in March. With the game on the line, Rubio challenged the legendary Kobe Bryant on the perimeter. Their knees knocked, Rubio’s ACL buckled and that was that. Rubio’s season ended abruptly and sucked the life out of a Timberwolves team that had been ready to end a lengthy playoff drought. The Wolves would go on to lose that game and 21 of their final 26 without the electric rookie.
The thought process with Rubio was that he’d come back stronger than ever. After all, he wasn’t a guard that relied on hard cuts to the basket or leaping ability. Rubio was skillful at passing, seeing the court and anticipating every player’s movements. In 41 games during 2011-12, and under the duress of a truncated, lockout-affected season, Rubio looked like a rising star. His stock could only get higher in the view of people within the organization.
That’s probably why ex-general manager David Kahn refused to give Kevin Love the maximum contract. Teams are only allowed to designate a five-year contract to one player, and Kahn – perhaps in a rare moment of attempted wisdom – saw the NBA climate and believed that the point guard position was more valuable than Love’s power forward spot.
Kahn’s retrospectively awful judgment cost the Wolves up to three years with Love, who was traded to Cleveland this past summer. To rub salt in the wound, Rubio seemed to plateau after his outstanding first season. He took over nine months to return to the floor following his ACL tear and struggled to find a rhythm – maybe because he was tentative on his left knee, or maybe because he hardly got to share the floor with Love, who missed most of the season with a broken hand.
Regardless, the critics started hounding Rubio during the 2013-14 season as the Wolves failed time after time to win close games. Rubio often found himself a scapegoat due to his inability to finish at the rim.
Rubio played in every single game last season and posted the highest assist total of his career, but in a league with high-scoring point guards like Chris Paul, Steph Curry, Derrick Rose and Russell Westbrook, Rubio’s lack of offense turned into an unshakable stigma. Articles trying to diagnose Rubio’s broken shot, such as this one written by Hoop Hype’s David Nurse, popped up all over the Internet. Publications labeled him as the worst shooter, not on the team, not in the league, but in modern NBA history.
Rubio shot a respectable 33 percent from beyond the arc last year but concluded his third consecutive season shooting under 40 percent from inside the arc. Most notably, his percentage on close-range shots – layups, more or less – was under 50 percent (49.1) according to charts on vorped.com. For comparison, Phoenix point guard Goran Dragic, who is the same height and just a tad heavier than Rubio, made 67 percent of shots around the basket and made more than twice the number of field goals Rubio did in that zone.
In the current NBA climate, point guards are expected to score and create for themselves. Rubio is unique in the sense that he makes everybody else on the court better, though not necessarily himself. The Wolves are banking on Rubio to become an offensive threat, which he has yet to prove he can be on a nightly basis. That’s why they proactively hired shooting coach Mike Penberthy to help Rubio’s jumper. If his outside shot improves, then driving lanes to the basket will become more accessible as defenders stop sinking in when Rubio is 20 feet from the hoop.
“His shot is improving,” said head coach Flip Saunders confidently on Saturday.
Still young
If it seems like Rubio’s name has been swirling around basketball circles for almost a decade, you’re not going crazy. Rubio made a splash in European basketball at age 16, got drafted at 18 and debuted at age 21. He just turned 24 a couple weeks ago, still a couple years from his physical prime.
That’s one thing the Wolves have to their advantage in giving Rubio four more years: They lock him up for potentially his best seasons.
“Ricky has some things that, as coaches, you can’t teach; his ability to pass the ball,” said Saunders. “I believe he’s got an opportunity – he’s been known as one of the best stealers in the league – but I feel that he has the opportunity to be a first or second team all-defensive player every year. He’s very competitive, works really hard, he’s maturing, which everyone sees.”
Rubio is still malleable, which Saunders loves. He’s another young point guard for the coach to develop. Saunders worked with no. 1 overall pick John Wall in Washington. In his Detroit years, Saunders won three division titles with Chauncey Billups at the helm, who he had groomed during Billups’ Minnesota tenure. Saunders understands that Rome wasn’t built in a day when it comes to youthful point guards.
“I’ve coached a lot of great point guards,” said Saunders, “and [Ricky]’s got a chance to be right up there with all of them. It took some of those guys longer than others. It took Chauncey a long time to find out who he was, but the thing he has, which great point guards have to have, is they have that competitiveness, that willingness to learn, a willingness to be coached and a willingness to accept criticism.”
Rubio is starting his fourth season, but he’s only been through two training camps after missing one due to injury and one because of a lockout. Frankly, his first three seasons were about as stable as Derrick Rose’s knees. Personnel changed frequently, injuries plagued the team and then-head coach Rick Adelman missed several stints because of his wife’s medical difficulties.
As Rubio begins playing with his second coaching staff, he’s now surrounded by youth, which should provide continuity. Most of the Wolves’ core have long-term contracts in place, which will give them time to meld over the course of several years.
When Saunders pointed out Rubio’s youth in Saturday’s press conference, he went out of his way to explain that the young Spaniard’s career is still in its infancy, saying essentially that his hiccups to this point can be forgiven. But with the team’s extreme youth movement – five players on the roster that are 21 years old or less – Rubio should not be allowed much more slack. Not with the impressionable Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine, and Shabazz Muhammad looking for guidance.
“I mean, with Kevin [Love] gone it was hard because he was our big player, big star,” said Rubio, “but I think what we brought back in was a lot of talent, a lot of future, and I just want to help them reach their ceiling. I think I’m good at that. I’m good to make my teammates better; just want to help them be as good as they can.”
“Ricky is our future,” said Saunders. “We have some other young players, but Ricky is the guy that’s the leader of that … even though Phil Jackson may not agree with my philosophy on point guards, I believe that they are the quarterback of the team, and I believe that I do that to give them the opportunity to have the leadership on the floor that all the other four players know that when he speaks, they have to listen to him.”
Despite not speaking the most fluent English at times, Rubio is a vocal player on the court and has the leadership qualities that Saunders speaks of. If he has to, he’ll look to a downtrodden teammate and tell them, “Change this face. Be happy. Enjoy.”
‘Good players get paid’
To see what could be awaiting Rubio, a year away from making a $13.75 million annual salary, one must not look much further than Target Field, where Joe Mauer earns $23 million per year for the Minnesota Twins. Rubio and Mauer generally don’t have much in common. One has a Fargo-esque Minnesotan accent; one speaks Spanish as his first language. One has been a league MVP; one has never made an All-Star team. One is known for his clean-cut sideburns; one is known for his floppy hair.
But one thing they have in common is team-leading salaries. Prior to Mauer’s 8-year, $184 million contract extension that began paying in 2010, the Cretin-Derham Hall product was basically a deity in the eyes of the local fan base. Since he began taking up a quarter of the payroll, he has been booed, slandered and criticized for every reason under the Minnesota sun: too many injuries, not enough home runs, no longer valuable as a first baseman, you name it. What’s most shocking about the vitriol surrounding Mauer is that he was widely regarded as the best catcher in baseball and arguably the best player in baseball for a time. He was revered for half a decade but now is plagued by the stigma of a nine-digit contract that he can’t live up to in the eyes of the public.
In Rubio’s case, he was extended for his potential. Management believes the fourth-year player can make a leap to elite status soon. That’s the other major difference between Mauer and Rubio. Mauer was paid so he could continue playing at the level he had delivered consistently for six previous seasons, but Rubio cannot simply maintain the status quo. He has to elevate his game to new levels.
Rubio has to be one of the top one or two players on a competitive Wolves team to justify his $55 million contract over the next four years. While the Wolves’ roster is currently full of young players with high upside and low salaries, those players will need to get paid eventually, and the Wolves can’t afford to have such a large sum eaten up by the player that Rubio was for his first three years.
To Rubio’s credit, nobody had to twist his arm to stay in Minnesota like a certain UCLA grad with the initials K.L. He wants to be here. He wants to win. He wants to earn his money. Now he has to follow through.
“From the first moment I came here to Minnesota, I felt like it was something special between Minnesota and me, and I keep feeling it,” Rubio said. “I just want to stay here for a long time and to take this team to the playoffs.”
Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket. He has previously served as a play-by-play broadcaster in Iowa and South Dakota and has covered Minnesota sports since 2012. Follow him on Twitter @SamEkstrom for further insights.