The Drubbing

Superstar or bust, that’s where most people land on the topic of Ricky Rubio. It’s clear that some of us here think that Rubio will be nothing short of an NBA superstar, eventually. I’m not so sure of his imminent rise to superstardom, but I’m not ready to write him off yet. So I’ll put myself in the cautiously optimistic category. I hope he becomes a capable starting NBA point guard, but I wouldn’t bet a paycheck on it.

So here’s what we know about Rubio. At 6’4″ and 190 pounds Ricky is tall enough to defend any NBA point guard, but needs to bulk up if he wants to avoid being pushed around. Since he’s only 18 years old, assuming he does play in the NBA right away, maturity may be an issue, but he also has years of experience playing professional basketball in Spain against older, bigger, stronger men.

Rubio's critics might be eating their words in a few years

The transition for Rubio won’t be easy. It’s hard enough being a rookie in the NBA, but making the transition from the International game to the NBA on top of that will be an especially difficult task. Even the best international players like Dirk, Tony Parker and Ginobili didn’t have smooth rookie years. But in a couple of years, Rubio has a chance.

Rubio won’t have to adjust to bigger, stronger, faster players and the differences between the NBA and international games. He’ll also have to adjust to a completely different team and style of play. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which by all media accounts was his coming out party, he averaged a paltry 4.8 points, 4 rebounds and 3 assists in 8 games, two of which were against Team USA. But Rubio was a small cog in the great wheel of Spanish Team basketball. They all knew each other so well and had played together so much that their sum was in fact greater than their parts. But during the Olympics Rubio expressed some disgust with the play of the NBA players for Team USA.

“Basketball isn’t one-on-one. It’s five-on-five, plus the bench.”

If Rubio can’t learn to play that one-on-one game in the NBA he may not last long. In the last professional season in Spain since the Olympics Rubio’s stats were rather underwhelming with 10 points per game, 1.9 rebounds, 6.1 assists, 2.2 steals and 3.0 turnovers per game. Hopefully he’s at least ready to compete in the NBA, so that he can buy himself some time to improve his NBA game like Tony Parker did.

Roko Ukic may be the best comparison for Ricky Rubio right now

Here’s something else that isn’t in Rubio’s favor, the history of foreign born point guards in the NBA. There is a short list of those that make it in The Association, and an even shorter list of those that become stars. From the last eleven years, there is only one international player that has successfuly become a star NBA point guard, Tony Parker. There are others that have managed to stay in the league like Beno Udrih, Roko Ukić, Sergio Rodríguez, Sun Yue, Marco Belinelli, Juan Carlos Navarro and Goran Dragic. And then there are too many to name that have come and gone, like Raül López, Carlos Arroyo.

Two NBA has-beens or never-weres, I'm not sure

So where will Rubio fit in? Is he a once-a-decade player like Tony Parker? Will he become a serviceable point guard like Jose Calderon and to a lesser extent, Beno Udrih and Sergio Rodríguez? Or will he be the next Miloš Vujanić? The comparisons to players like Pistol Pete Maravich and Steve Nash do little but tell me that Rubio has potential, something almost all NBA draft picks are tagged with. Don’t forget Nikoloz Tskitishvili was pegged to be the next Dirk Nowitzki. And Lampe was supposed to be a Kevin Garnett and Dirk Nowitzki hybrid. But I don’t really expect Fran Fraschilla to tell me that Víctor Claver is going to be the next Peter Fehse.

Bottom line, everything I read about Rubio tells me he’s a product of the hype machine that has produced such greats as Frédéric Weis, Nikoloz Tskitishvili and Maciej Lampe. But I hope that’s not the case. In every story he sounds like the next big thing, but his numbers just don’t back it up. I want for Rubio to be great, but I’m not sure it’ll come to pass. Only time will tell, but until then I’m reserving judgement, hyperbole and elation.