How a jump-shooting Ricky Rubio improves the Timberwolves
By Ben Beecken
If you watched the Timberwolves’ opening night victory over the Los Angeles Lakers, you saw Ricky Rubio drop a career-high 28 points.
But the novelty of Rubio’s outing wasn’t simply the point total. Nor was it the 14 assists, although no one’s complaining about those.
What Rubio’s season-opening performance showed us is exactly what an even semi-lethal offensive threat from the point combined with a top-three passing point guard in the NBA can do for an otherwise sputtering offense. The 28 points alone don’t mean all that much, and neither do the 14 assists. But it’s the endless possibilities that each of those relatively gaudy numbers imply.
While it’s admittedly a bit crude, we can easily boil down the direct of effect of Rubio’s stellar outing to two possessions. They were two vitally important, back-to-back possessions down the stretch of a close game, sandwiched around a solid defensive possession by the Timberwolves that resulted in zero points for the host Lakers.
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The Wolves were leading by a score of 104-102 when Rubio brought the ball up the court and accepted a screen from Karl-Anthony Towns just above the arc in the center of the floor. Rubio took a couple dribbles to his left and ended up about 18 feet from the rim — traditionally an area that Rubio has struggled to a) be willing to shoot from off the bounce and b) make the shots that he does take.
But on this night, Rubio had already banked a fair amount of confidence, and rightfully so. The Lakers’ defenders largely stayed home, resulting in a Bermuda Triangle of which the Wolves point guard found himself smack-dab in the middle.
Julius Randle, assigned to Nemanja Bjelica on the left wing outside the arc, began moving back towards his man, vacating the elbow of the lane that Rubio was heading towards. Roy Hibbert, whose man was the rolling Towns, stayed planted in the lane, not exactly contesting what became an easy jumper from Rubio.
Notice that both Randle, almost hidden behind Rubio, and Hibbert, smack-dab in the middle of the paint, have shifted their weight away from the man with the ball and are stuck in no-man’s land. Rubio drained the jumper, giving the Wolves a two possession lead with just over three minutes remaining in the contest.
After an empty possession by the home team, Rubio came up the floor and accepted a higher screen from Towns before dribbling right back to nearly the same spot on the floor where he had sunk a jump-shot less than 30 seconds prior.
This time, Hibbert and Randle stayed right there, feet planted, expecting another shot attempt from Rubio. This time, however, look at the open passing lanes for the Wolves point guard: Bjelica is wide open on the wing and Randle has no angle to contest a pass, Towns is one giant step from being deeper than Hibbert in the lane after the Lakers center took a terrible angle when showing after the screen, and Wiggins, who had remained stationary on the possession prior, is cutting back-door on a distracted Kobe Bryant.
Towns actually angles his path too sharply towards the middle of the lane, effectively allowing Hibbert to now both guard him and still obstruct a path to the basket from Rubio. But he still has the options of passing back to Bjelica, hitting a streaking Wiggins, or possibly even a lob to Towns if the pass was delivered with pin-point accuracy.
Hibbert indeed recovers on Towns, but Bryant never gets his head around until Wiggins is accepting the pass from Rubio and about to go up for what probably should have been an easy dunk or lay-in.
The final result is a foul from Hibbert, giving Wiggins two free throw attempts and chance to further extend the Wolves’ lead in the final minutes of the game.
This is but two plays in the first game of a marathon season, but it’s also a snapshot of what could be endlessly tough decisions that Wolves opponents will have to make throughout the year. Teams will have to game plan for this, and when the lineup on the floor has three players capable of knocking down three-pointers at above league-average (Bjelica, Wiggins, and Kevin Martin all qualify in the above examples) and an athletic big man in Towns, opponents are going to be stuck in limbo nearly every time down the floor.
Keep an eye out for this throughout the season, and even in the mini-journey that is each individual game. Early on, the Lakers weren’t guarding Rubio at all in the mid-range, or even behind the arc. But that changed as the night wore on.
The story could be similar in Denver on Friday night. If Rubio starts out reasonably warm from the field, however, expect the Nuggets’ defenders to collapse towards the middle of the floor, leaving open shooters on the perimeter and lanes available for cutters.