I'll try not to be the thousandth writer to tell you how exciting it is to see the ball zoom unpredictably around the court from the hands of Ricky Rubio. Just get League Pass already and see for yourself. (Under discussion: renaming "Daily Dime Live" "Ricky Rubio oohing and aahing"). That, my friends, is one hell of a show.
But without the ball, it's a whole 'nother "holy cow." BasketballValue tells us that when Rubio is on the court, the Timberwolves are giving up 95 points per 100 possessions. When he's off, that number is 104. It's early yet, and those adjusted plus/minus numbers are particularly vulnerable to small sample sizes. But it looks right now like Rubio is already a difference-maker defending NBA guards, and that his impact on defense rivals all that stuff he's doing at the other end.
To my eyes, it's clear that he has very long arms. (Look at that photo above. See how far his shoulder is from the ball compared to Danny Green's?) What's more important, however, is that he is constantly doing everything he can to try to make a difference. Coaches always say that a big part of being good at defense is wanting to be good at defense. Mission accomplished. Sometimes that means he gets caught watching the ball a bit, but in general, he's hustling. If you remember the play in the photo above (which Rubio later said he thought had been a foul) I'm pretty sure that Green was assuming nobody was going to bother to chase him down. But in this case, he was wrong.
You also might notice a lot of opposing guards simply coughing up balls against Minnesota. If you rewind and watch again, you'll notice a lot of those were poked free by Rubio, even if he is not credited with all those steals.
In fact, it's plays like that that make me love advanced stats like plus/minus. No, we can't say exactly what it is that works about his defense. But we can say that over this young season, when he's out there, the defense has worked much better than when he's not. As Martha Stewart would say, that's a good thing.
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