When I started making all these Ricky Rubio vids, he was kind of a forgotten man in Minnesota. Kris Dunn stole all his hype, and even though Dunn ended up sucking, he never gave the hype back. Rubio remained a decent player, but the stolen hype left him with a significant downgrade in popularity. So even though I pretty much considered him too good for this channel, I started highlighting him anyway.
I might have to revise that policy. He’s been beasting lately, putting up double-digit assist games with ease, but more importantly, he’s scoring and an increasingly efficient rate. One of DownToBuck’s rules is “No players who can both score and pass”. That’s Rubio now! And also Jokic! And a few others, but for the most part that’s one of my factors for deciding which players to showcase. I’ll keep going until the end of the year at least with him.
The Timberwolves kinda choked this one away, and Rubio didn’t do enough in the end of regulation/overtime, but he still had another monster game, 19 points and 15 assists. Some of these passes were bananas, some of them were really lame. Ignore the lame ones and just put that behind-the-back one to Rush on loop for five minutes to get the full Rubio effect.