To be earmarked for greatness at a young age is a familiar feeling to many of the elite athletes who make up the NBA. However, even within the context of NBA players, Ricky Rubio was internationally known at a far more advanced stage than usual.
Rubio made his professional basketball debut a week shy of his 15th birthday, making him the youngest player in the history of the Spanish ACB league (considered to be one of the best leagues in the world), quite literally a child holding his own against grown men. As a 17-year-old in the 2008 Olympics, he helped the Spanish national team win silver, making him the youngest player to ever appear in the Olympic basketball gold medal game. His deft ballhandling, magical passing and general exuberance while playing drew comparisons to greats like "Pistol" Pete Maravich and Steve Nash.
The first time I took notice of Rubio was at the European Under-16 Championships, in late summer 2006. I watched the Spanish phenom put up a Herculean performance in the gold-medal game: 51 points, 24 rebounds, 12 assists and 7 steals. Now in the NBA, some aspects of Rubio's game continue to amaze (passing), while others leave a lot to be desired (shooting). A year ago, I called him the 27th best player under 25 years old in the league. It's hard to believe he's just 23, as he's been in the basketball spotlight for so long. Still, it's undeniable that his game has stagnated.
Here's a look why, and how he can get back on track.
What went wrong?
At 6-foot-4 and 190 pounds, Rubio has always enjoyed a significant size advantage at his position. In earlier stages of his career, this allowed him to get away with having a subpar individual offensive skill set; he could always get to where he wanted to go and create the passing opportunities to take advantage of his vision and delivery. For many gifted passers, this often turns into a sort of martyrdom ("I'm too unselfish to become a better individual scorer because it is far more virtuous to pass"), which continues to stunt the development of the player until rectified.
Rubio lacks the scoring acumen of Maravich and the elite shooting of Nash, so I always felt that a much more accurate comparison was Jason Kidd -- another large point guard with exceptional vision who struggled early on with his individual offense. The running joke about Kidd was his first name was "Ason" because he had no J, and it wasn't until his third season that his shooting numbers began to steadily rise. It wasn't until the latter stages of his career until what was once a weakness became a strength, as Kidd became a reliable standstill shooter from the 3-point line.
For Rubio, there is a common misdiagnosis that his struggles come from his lack of shooting. After all, many PGs (Kidd for example) have flourished in this league without the aid of a reliable jumper. Also, that line of thinking neglects to take into account that he is experiencing the same rise in efficiency from the perimeter that Kidd did in his third year: Rubio is shooting 39 percent (19-of-49) on above-the-break 3's, the harder (versus corner) 3-point shot. That's better than more renowned shooters like LeBron James, J.J. Redick, Kyrie Irving and even teammate Kevin Love.
His numbers are considerably worse off the dribble and on jumpers inside the arc, but those are low efficiency shots in general. So what's really wrong with Rubio? He is awful at the rim.
Field goal attempts (FGAs) inside the restricted area are the highest efficiency shot a player can attempt (literally point-blank range). Many of the gaudier overall field goal percentage (FG%) numbers around the league (even from perimeter players) are built upon a healthy foundation of rim FGAs, where conversion rates are the highest. Rubio has never hit 50 percent of his rim FGAs, and has been stuck at 44 percent the last two seasons, placing him in the bottom 10 in the NBA overall. While Kidd also was below average at the rim to start his career, he was never as bad as Rubio.
Why he struggles at the rim
Rubio's biggest issue is that he doesn't finish over length; in other words, he is terrible at completing contested layups in traffic. For a player who doesn't get a whole lot of uncontested layups (he usually passes ahead in transition rather than keeping for himself), that's a death knell to his rim FG%. Digging deeper, we find several factors that contribute to this:
PHYSICAL: While a good athlete, Rubio has never had an explosive first step or verticality. Tearing his left ACL during his rookie season sapped some of that physical ability, so he has to find ways to gain separation and finish before the contest comes. Also, he has a tendency to get easily knocked off course on drives, which I suspect can be attributed to poor core strength.
SKILL: Despite being right-hand dominant, Rubio wants to go left. This problem is that he's not particularly adept at finishing with his left hand, and would actually prefer to finish with his right hand on the left side, leading to awkward layup attempts like this:
Although he takes off from his right foot, Rubio switches back to his right hand, something that is actually a lot harder to do that it appears at first blush (it's a technique Nash uses often to throw shot-blockers off). He still attempts mostly righty layups jumping off his left foot on the left side and converts at a higher percentage than any other form.
When he does go right, he has a nasty habit of drifting away from the basket on his attempts rather than closing in on the rim.
While the screenshot above makes it seem like he's turned the corner and is getting to the rim, his body is actually floating away, in the direction of the gold arrow, toward the baseline.
Another bad habit he has is going up for layups without gathering the ball when going into his attempt (another Nash staple designed to help get the shot off quicker).
This can lead to ball bobbles on the way up, reducing the effectiveness of his attempt.
MENTAL: There is an undeniable mental aspect that rears its ugly head on some Rubio layup attempts where he blows wide open, uncontested shots at the rim (see below). In essence, he appears to experience (at times) the same anxiety a poor free throw shooter might feel when he steps to the line.
How can he fix it?
There's probably a good chance that some of Rubio's struggles to finish at the rim can be attributed to his recovery from his torn ACL (it's worth noting that his best rim FG% of 48 percent happened in his rookie year, even though that still isn't good). One has to wonder if part of the problem is an over-focus on working on his more publicized flaw of a perimeter shot and lack of attention to finishing. There are two particular areas of skill development that might need work as well:
POST-UPS: According to Synergy, Rubio has one post-up that resulted in a shot attempt...in his NBA career. In three years, he's tried to score on the block once! Rick Adelman's offense does not feature a lot of post-up options for point guards, but it is still staggering how little a player with his size advantage exploits it (by the way, a big part of Kidd's efficiency around the rim early in his career came from post-ups).
IN-BETWEEN GAME: Rubio has no repertoire of "giant killer" shots (floaters, runners, teardrops) to speak of, something that is usually a staple of smaller guards because they are incapable of finishing at the rim over length regularly. It's also a feature of guards who are poor at shooting off the dribble, as an alternative to pulling up for a midrange jumper.
For Rubio's full potential to be realized, he must find a way to solve his struggles to score in basketball's hottest hot zone.
첫댓글 자이언트킬러라는 표현이 재밌네요ㅎ그런데 플로터와 러너와 티어드랍이 각각 어떤거죠??
플로터 / 러너 / 티어드랍 / 자이언트 킬러 모두 같은 동작을 두고 붙인 이름들입니다. 볼을 붕 띄워서 플로터이고, 달리다가 쏴서 러너이고, 볼 궤적이 정점에서 뚝 떨어져서 티어드랍이고, 덩치를 공략해서 자이언트 킬러죠. 묘사하는 방법이 다를 뿐 지칭하는 동작은 같습니다.
@Duncan&Kidd홧팅 친절한 설명 감사합니다ㅎㅎ
역시나 좋은글 감사합니다...
한 미네팬과의 대화에서도 이 이야기가 나왔습니다... 골밑에서 확률세탁이 안되어서 문제라고...
이러한 문제점이 있었군요... 오른손을 사용하면서 왼쪽으로 들어간다라.... ㅡㅡ;;;
파커의 마무리를 빌려주고싶은 생각이 굴뚝같네요...
아주 좋은글이네요 확실히 골밑에서 메이드 못하기때문에 역습을 당하는 경우가 많죠 루비오가 살아나야 플옵의 가능성이 보입니다
포스트업 수치는 정말 경악할만한 수준이네요. 발전하는 모습 꼭 보고싶습니다.
이른 아침부터 좋은 정보 감사드립니다~!! ^^
오른발 점프 - 오른손 마무리는 내쉬를 제외하면 파커가 지금 리그에서 지존급인데, 루비오가 이걸 따라하는건 아직 무리인듯 하고, 왼손 레이업만 좀 더 제대로 구사해도 상당부분 해결이 될텐데 말이죠 ㅠ