Some Postgame Rubio Thoughts

This makes me very excited for Rubio to get here, he’s going to be so exciting to watch on a nightly basis and this should actually be respectable by then which may make him wanna stay… a couple other thoughts:

Anybody see Jon Scheyer today? I know he’s limited defensively and has zero athleticism, but I can’t help but think he’d be great in the triangle offense with his high basketball IQ, shooting ability, and passing ability. Any thoughts?

Also, Evan Turner is awesome. I think he’s the number two pick in the draft for sure after his play today (and the play of Derrik Favors). Thoughts?

What I like best about the Euroleague was the 24 second shot clock. Rubio developing his skills at an offense under the same constraints as the NBA makes Europe a much better training grounds on getting guards to quickly initiate the offense. Just 1 year in Europe taught Jennings enough to be the best in this rookie class at running a pro offense.

His passing continues to look good, especially pushing the ball in transition. Saw him drain some uncontested threes with some line drive shots, but they definitely went in :)

I watched a bit of the game. Rubio looked very solid. There was one sequence where he threw a pass on the break that was stolen. Rubio then stole the ball back and passed it to a teammate. Later that same possession the other team stole the ball again and Rubio stole it back again and (i believe) assisted on a basket. Nice to see that competitive fire.

I also noted his passes along the perimeter in the flow of the offense. Rubio receives a pass from a teammate on the perimeter and he moves the ball so quickly to the weakside that it’s as if the ball just bounced off his hands across the court. Amazing.

….he strikes me as being way older than 18, at least on the court. Makes sense I guess since he’s been playing professionally since 14 (so does that make him 22 in basketball years…?)

He seems to have that “glue” factor that I’ve seen in Nash and Kidd and Stockton, where he can just instinctively tie a team and an offense together in a way that doesn’t really show up in his statline, but most definitely shows up in the boxscore as a whole and his team’s record.

and when he is contractually able to come over we should be ready to compete for the playoffs ;)

But I’ve caught him a couple of other times earlier this season, and I agree with everything you said.

What impresses me more than anything is his extremely unique ability to put the ball in the exact place it needs to be when he passes. The kid can throw a one-handed, hook pass crosscourt to find an open shooter, and it’s right in the hands in perfect shooting position practically every time.

Also, I really like his off the ball defense. Barca plays zone almost exclusively, with Ricky on the wing. He does a great job anticipating passes and getting his arms into the passing lanes. He’s a bit of gambler, so he gets burned from time to time, but it pays off more than it doesn’t. He’s not a particularly good on the ball defender, and tends to concede the open jumper, but athletic enough to keep his guy in front of him on the drive.

If Jonny can become a consistent scorer, but doesn’t develop his facilitating skills, pairing him with Rubio would actually make quite a bit of sense. Ricky coould run the offense as PG, with Jonny playng off the ball more and slashing when he can. On defense, Jonny would guard the 1 with Ricky off the ball against the 2.

Long story short, I think the kid’s gonna be a Nash-like player with worse outside shooting, but slightly better defense.

I would be surprised if he had appeared in that game.