Seemingly all hair, elbows, knees - and, oh yeah, frightfully fulgent talent too - the Iberian Boy King of Basketball is Back.
Ricky Rubio - 18-year star point guard of his home town DKV Joventut team - burst into mass international awarenesss in last summer's Olympics as the darling of the silver-winning Spanish national team.
As a 17-year-old - someone who wouldn't be able to legally smoke in the United States - he was smokin' world-class competition in the 18.5 minutes he averaged in 8 Olympic games. His line? 4.8 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists, 2.1 steals per. His knock? 28% percent from the field. That will undoubtedly improve with age, though.
His Olympic success seemed to pave the way for the Spanish town of Badalona's Finest to dominate this season in Euroleague and domestic play. Especially since the team's star from last year, EuroFlyer Rudy Fernandez, is now scraping the stratosphere for the NBA's Portland Trailblazers.
Alas, before the season he had surgery on a wrist injury sustained in the Olympics and has missed all games until this week...
His production in the two games since his return has been understandably low: 2.5 assists, 1 rebound, 1 steal in 6 minutes per. He hasn't even attempted a shot yet. But, more importantly, his team has won its two games - against Union Olimpija and Fenerbahçe Ülker.
Still, for those hankering for visions of the "Rubio of old," check out this mix of Ricky atomizing kids as a 14-year old:
(Found through Ballineurope)
Friday, December 12, 2008
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2 comments:
Hah, that video makes it look like it was a one man team and given the age group, it wouldn't be too surprising to find that was the case. Straight nasty!
You'd be surprised - this was a junior national team, and chances are some of his contemporaries will also make Olympic teams, play in the Euroleague and go on to the NBA. It was like when LeBron was straight murderin' folk in high school all-star games. You'd think those corpses would never do much, when watching them in comparison to LeBron, but some of them - e.g. Charlie Villaneuva - went on to become NBA lottery picks.
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