Do not be fooled by the “14 Assists” part of the video title. They’re great assists, don’t get me wrong. He’d probably still have 10 of them if this was a FIBA game, that’s how good they are. But they aren’t the best part of the video. No, that honor goes to the FOUR (4) pull-up midrange jumpers he splashed tonight. Sometimes it’s fun to set up your teammates, and sometimes (always, if you’re my teammates whenever I play pickup) it’s fun to look them off and pretend you’re Kobe Bryant for a play.
Remember the first game of last season for Rubio? He had almost 30 points to go along with 14 assists, and he hit a ton of jumpers. It was too good to be true, but for a moment there we let ourselves believe that he had turned a corner with his scoring. He quickly regressed to his dismal scoring averages after that, but he showed, if only for a single gleaming moment, that he could do more than pass the rock.
That’s the kind of vibe I’m getting here. The shots he made tonight were great, but you can bet that he’ll take a couple of the same variety next game, they’ll brick, and he’ll go back to his old ways. Watching the ones tonight, and you can kind of see why that happens. Those suckers are FLAT. He’s probably tired of people telling him to shoot with more arc, but I’m going to tell him again: Ricky, you have to shoot with more arc.