Kevin Martin?I haven't seen Rubio play, so I won't comment on him. I have seen Teague play several times, and I'm sold. Look, the guy has quickness of the quickest point guards in the NBA - Tony Parker, C. Paul, Connelly, D. Harris. Then he has a shooting touch as good as any guard in the NBA. That's all you need to know. If you want to have a guard with lightning quicks, who can get to the hole anytime he wants, who can create a shot anytime he wants, and who shoots "lights-out", then he's your guy. If you're obsessed about having a "true" point guard, then he's not. He'll just be drafted by somebody else and beat our brains in every time we play them.
And by the way, Teague can defend. I've seen him block the shots of guards while making up ground of about 10-12 feet. You don't see that everyday.
Kevin Martin?
I dont think its even a comparison. Jeff is a 2 in a pgs body, dime a dozen. Rubio is a big talented pg.
It's not as easy to "develop" pg skills as many on here are insinuating. Everybody makes nice passes once in a while, and while nobody is saying teauge couldn't run the point, I think people are saying he really shouldn't on this team. Scoring is not truly the issue with us. Someone to control this team and point it in the right direction is. Someone to give us a sense of purpose, to slow us down, to make us run, and hold us accountable for what we do. Teauge will be a good scorer, but he will not be able to run a team. The ability to pass does not a PG make. Floor vision, basketball IQ and the ability to affect a game without scoring does. I don't think Teauge has it.
Then you got to think Rubio hasn't been sitting on the couch eating ruffles. He has been playing professional basketball working out and getting plenty of exercise. I'd say he is in pretty damn good shape wouldn't you? So how much quicker could he get. As far as Teague goes I'd say his passing skills are better than Mike Bibby's who was the starting pg around here for a few years taking us pretty deep into the playoffs for a while.
Nbrans has mentioned this too....do you really think that a 17 year old WILL NOT get a heck of a lot quicker, faster and stronger? He was a high school junior in the Olympics...of course he looks slower! When Chris Paul and Deron Williams were 17 I think they would have looked pretty silly trying to guard or get a step on the top NBA guards. He just has a lot more developing to do and you're making a mistake if you write off any further athletic improvements.
Baron Davis was a freakish athlete when he was a frosh at UCLA
quickness is thrown around a lot and is overrated. It's not a track meet. this is a team game, and the intangibles rubio has make up for his "lack" of quickness. people need to stop comparing anybody to chris paul. the man is unique. compare anybody to him and they pale in comparison.
*sorry my post mirrors yours, rainmakers my browser at work is slow
Tell that to JJ Redick, Acie Law, Marcus Williams, Adam Morrison, and all the other guys who busted due to lack of quickness.
The NBA is absolutely a track meet, especially for guards.
quickness is thrown around a lot and is overrated. It's not a track meet. this is a team game, and the intangibles rubio has make up for his "lack" of quickness. people need to stop comparing anybody to chris paul. the man is unique. compare anybody to him and they pale in comparison.
*sorry my post mirrors yours, rainmakers my browser at work is slow
This is ridiculous, LarryLegend. He's not Eric Gordon, he's not Gilbert Arenas, he's not Allen Iverson. Watch the games, or at least watch the videos I linked to. We can debate the degree to which he'll be a good passer and lead an NBA team, but he's not a pure 2, and he's certainly not a dime a dozen player.
Quickness is the most important athletic ability for a guard. If Paul didn't have it, he'd be ordinary. Intangibles can't get you past your man on the dribble, and it can't guard your man. It can't get you open for a shot. It can't get you to a loose ball faster than anybody out on the court. Quickness does that. And unless you're 6'9" and 240 lbs with dribbling ability like Magic, then you'd better have it. Does anyone remember Ernie D. Gregorio? He had a ton of intangibles - vision, dribbling ability, yada,yada, and I don't think he was any smaller than C. Paul. But he just couldn't compete athletically against the quicker guards in the league. Didn't have the quickness.
I don't get this Ricky vs Teague. It doesn't have to be either or. I like Rubio a little more, but I love both. You don't have to dump on one to like the other.
Stronger? Yes. He'll get stronger.
Quicker and faster? No. Not much anyway.
Kobe won the dunk contest when he was 18, and it was the period of his career when he was the most explosive. Baron Davis was a freakish athlete when he was a frosh at UCLA, dunking almost from the free throw line even though he's only 6'3".
Basketball players wear down. All of those little ankle injuries and nicks and mileage wear down an athlete's athleticism. Players hit their peak ability wise around 28-30 because they still have enough athleticism and their skills have advanced. But 28-30 is not when basketball players peak on pure non-strength running and jumping athleticism. That's more like 18-19.
Rubio is not some sort of late bloomer. Sure, he can grow a little bit more and get a little bit quicker, but players don't all of a sudden gain Chris Paul quickness at age 18.
Fair enough. And for the record, I'm not dumping on Rubio to build up Teague. I felt this way about Rubio before I ever saw Teague. Quite simply, Rubio just terrifies me.
Here are my biases:
1) I don't like point guards who can't shoot for a high percentage because in the NBA it puts way too much pressure on the rest of the team and very rarely turns out well. Rondo is the exception that proves the rule. Lots of people thought Conley would turn out well because he'd improve his shooting. So far not so good.
2) I don't like point guards who aren't quick. Bibby made me pull my hair out, particularly in the later years. Yes, we can debate Rubio's quickness relative to other players and whether it will hamper him. If we draft him I really hope I'm wrong on this. But slow point guards are an anachronism. Even Beno is relatively quick relative to the PGs of 10 years ago (and I don't agree, DimeDropper, that Rubio is markedly faster than Beno).
3) I think pass-first point guards are overrated in the NBA. If you look back at the teams that won championships in the last 20 years, virtually none of them featured a pass-first point guard. The championship PGs are almost all quality shooters and good defenders.
Needless to say, all of this means Rubio plays to all of the things I don't like in a point guard. He scares me. Even if he turns out to be everything everyone hopes he will be (basically a brilliant passing non-shooting PG), he's still not the type of PG I'd want to build around. Maybe I'm letting these biases cloud my judgment, in which case I could turn out to be spectacularly wrong. Or I'm right. We'll see.
Your quickness, speed, jumping athletic peak is not age 18-19. Look at Olympic sprinters. Usain Bolt was 22. Justin Gatlin was 22 in '04. Maurice Greene was 26 in '00. This is unscientific but I bet the peak of quickness and speed generally comes between ages 22-26.
You can not look at a kid who would have been an American high school junior over the summer and say he won't get quicker or faster. That is completely illogical. He will undoubtedly get faster and the only question is how much.
nbrans, you really don't have to explain it to me. We've gone through this a zillion times!I know how you feel, and honestly, I know your skepticism is justified. I have worries, too. Obviously we feel differently on the matter, but it will all be resolved in the future.
I have no problem admitting that I'm a little biased, but I've really tried not to let that cloud my judgement or any of the things I've said about him. Maybe you're right that he's not markedly faster than Beno, but worst case scenario, he is as fast. Don't know what that means, really.
Anyway, you make a strong argument against. I think we've both gone over it enough to know where we stand. I'll still read it all, but I think I'll slow down on the Rubio posting, as I feel like a broken record.
These guys started very, very fast and through training shaved off hundreds of seconds off their time, as in inches and feet of the course of a hundred meter dash. It's not a difference you'd notice on a basketball court.
I mean, come on. It's not like Usain Bolt ran like Ricky Rubio at age 18 before he magically turned into Usain Bolt. Rubio can get a little quicker, but hey, by this rationale maybe Teague is going to get quicker too! You won't even be able to see him by 2012 he'll run so fast.