I don’t know what Zach LaVine being out for the season means for Ricky Rubio. I know what it means for Brandon Rush (Thibs is gonna try and kill him with minutes), but Ricky? He’s probably gonna keep doing what he has been doing a lot lately: dropping hella dimes.
As long as Towns isn’t the one getting injured, Rubio’s assist counts should be fine. There’s probably some stat somewhere that shows how many times a certain player gets assisted by another, actually there definitely is because I found it once, but I’m too lazy to look right now. Anyway, that stat probably says that the Rubio-Towns combo is one of the most fruitful in the league. Not as much pick-and-pop midrange action this year (at least that I’ve seen), which is basically free assists, but there’s still a great connection between those two. At least a one-way connection. Probably not many Towns-to-Rubio assists are happening, mainly because Rubio still isn’t much of a scorer.
He has been doing better in that area lately, though. Seems like every vid I make of him this days has a couple of those pull-up call-my-own-goddamn-number midrange jumpers in it. Gotta make ’em pay for sagging off, I guess.