It didn’t take long for that, along with a $9 sale on season tickets (in honor of his jersey number), to get splashed all over the Timberwolves’ official website. They’ve been waiting for this moment for two years.
Whether this is news that should excite Timberwolves and NBA fans remains to be seen. The Wolves sternly believe they have something special in the 20-year-old 6-foot-1, 180-pound Spanish point guard.
Rubio turned pro when he was 14 years old and played for Spain’s Olympic team that lost to the U.S. in the 2008 gold medal game. He was the youngest member of the team - that featured the likes of the Gasol brothers, Rudy Fernandez and Jose Calderon – by five years.
The Wolves used the No. 5 overall pick in the 2009 to draft Rubio, who’s been described as flashy and the kind of player that can thrive in an up-tempo offense.
The problem was Rubio was under contract with his team in Spain at the time and the fee to get him out of that contract was $6 million, only $500,000 of which the Timberwolves were allowed to pay.
So Rubio decided to stay in Spain until the penalty fee became a little more manageable ($1.4 million).
In the meantime, the consensus is Rubio’s gotten worse.
He averaged 10.2 points and 3.9 assists in 2007-08 for DKV Joventut in Spain and 10 points and 6.1 assists in 2008-09. Over the past two seasons with Regal Barcelona, he’s averaged 6.5 points and he lost his starting job.
That’s enough to make any executive sweat but the Timberwolves remain enthusiastic about their long-awaited draft pick.
The argument in Rubio’s defense is that the style of play that his teams in Spain use didn’t properly utilize his ability to improvise on offense and instead, stifled his explosiveness.
Or that could translate into Minnesota’s brass being terrified they made a huge mistake.
Although, how much worse could it get for a team that went 17-65 last season, 15-67 the year before and hasn’t had a winning record since 2004-05?
Minnesota is in need of a capable point guard to lead double-double machine Kevin Love and the rest of the offense. And the Wolves have the No. 2 and No. 20 overall picks in this year’s draft to help rebuild this struggling team.
So while the Timberwolves seem to have a lot to be excited about, it’s all just a big game of wait and see.
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