The magic of Ricky Rubio: a special mark on the NBA

Ricky Rubio's long career in the NBA has functioned as a perfect mirror of his career. With its lights and its shadows. The announcement last Thursday of the termination of his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the definitive end of a career of more than 12 years in the American league allow us to relive a period of good and bad moments. Ricky says goodbye to the NBA at the age of 33 after competing in four teams (Minnesota, Utah, Phoenix and Cleveland) and as the fifth Spaniard with the most games in the basketball mecca: 712 between the regular season and the playoffs for the title , although only 14 of them in the playoffs (11 with Utah and three with Cleveland). Pau Gasol with 1,362 games, Serge Ibaka with 1,071, Marc Gasol with 990 and José Manuel Calderón with 935 surpass the point guard from El Masnou (Barcelona) in this illustrious list. Ricky also appears as the author of 5,248 assists, a section in which he was among the top 20 in the competition for seven seasons, and was crowned as the player with the most steals of the ball per game in three campaigns: 2012-13, 13-14 and 15-16.

Behind the brilliance of these statistics appears a visionary passing player, supportive in the game, the perfect representative of the collective basketball that has elevated the Spanish team, explosive in his physical plenitude and improved in shooting, one of the aspects in which who has worked the most in his career to reach the status of a complete player. José Manuel Calderón, another reference in the national team and also the protagonist of a long career in the NBA, highlights for EL PAÍS the virtues of Rubio from the shared position of game director: “Ricky leaves a very good mark in the NBA, as player and as a person. In the American league he has stood out as a player with a special magic to make his teammates better. “Ricky read the game like few others,” says Calderón from Cleveland, where he serves as an advisor to the Cavaliers, a position from which he was an important piece in Rubio's signing for the franchise.

On the bench, few like Sergio Scariolo know the Catalan point guard. The Italian coach, winner of the NBA ring in 2019 as an assistant with the Toronto Raptors, felt Rubio's value in the United States up close and has mentored him as a coach in the most glorious stage of the Spanish team. “Ricky has been an extremely respected player in the NBA. He appreciated his knowledge of the game, his instinct. In this he was special, different, at the FIBA ​​basketball level and even more so in the NBA, with that ability to see the game, decision-making, extreme altruism in a selfish league,” analyzes Scariolo for this newspaper. “He was special because of that and then because of who he was as a person, his positivity, his constant concern for others, which may be one of the reasons that has taken its toll on him, caring so much about others. Ricky, furthermore, has never been a great scorer in the NBA and in a league where the pure scorer is magnified, the fact that he has that general appreciation has a lot of merit,” adds the coach.

Ricky was picked fifth overall by Minnesota in the draft 2009, after Blake Griffin (Clippers), Hasheem Thabeet (Memphis), James Harden (Oklahoma) and Tyreke Evans (Sacramento Kings), although he changed Joventut for Barcelona and was Euroleague champion in 2010 before crossing the pond on following summer. He soon began to suffer the other side of the sport, a torn cruciate ligament in his left knee in a collision with Kobe Bryant in 2012. Then came ankle surgery, and that spiral of uncertainty that players in the NBA suffer when being used. often as bargaining chips without hardly being masters of their destiny. Ricky experienced it firsthand when in 2020 he was briefly sent from Phoenix to Oklahoma before ending up again in Minnesota. All in a seen and unseen reason for which he raised his voice. “By signing a contract you accept the conditions, but there are ways and shapes. We players are privileged, but those who are in charge of these things have to understand that, in addition to being players, we are also people. It has been a surprise, especially because of the communication that has occurred. When the rumors about my transfer started, I called my people and they told me that my name was not on the table. It is not a dish of good taste that when you are involved in a project, you give your all and you see that it is working, at the first opportunity you have to leave.”

That's how the business worked and that's how Ricky accepted it, and eight months later, when he was in the Tokyo Olympic village concentrating with the Spanish team, he was an actor in another dance in the market, the one he sent to Cleveland. There he broke his left knee again, in 2021, when he was enjoying the best moment of his career due to speed, explosiveness, intelligence and maturity, crowned two years earlier as the MVP of the World Cup won in Beijing.

The physical consequences have accompanied the psychological ones: the death of his mother from cancer and the mental health problem that made him leave the national team last summer and in whose recovery he continues to be immersed. Scariolo lived that moment as if it were a son. “It was a hard moment, a shock for me, of great emotion and sadness, when I thought if I could have done something differently,” says Scariolo; “It doesn't matter what you earn, success. The brain is a mechanism that can get flu for reasons that we do not know about. Now I have tried to be close to him, as a person and as a friend. We are there by your side.”

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