In the midst of all the Father/Sonning that’s been going on here at Dancing with Noah, real life actual NBA games are still going on and that means players are still doing strange things at strange times. Last night I was out and about until 9:30 PST and when I arrived home, I saw this intriguing stat line by Spain’s own wonderchild, the imaginative visionary Ricky Rubio: 19pts with 5-6 from deep, 12 assists and 8 steals. Say word? Word.
It’s pretty damn phenomenal if you start wrapping your head around it and not just in NBA historical terms (as you’ll see below, Rubio’s the only player in league history to accomplish 12sasts/8stls/5 3s in the same game), but in Rubio terms as well. A little over a year ago on March 9th 2012, the rookie Rubio, all of 21 years-old, tore his ACL. At that time, his career highs in the aforementioned stats were 14 assists, 6 steals and 2 3s. And in the 49 games he’s played this year he hadn’t bested any of those career highs. Then last night shows up and the Bucks and maybe some Brandon Jennings, maybe some Monta Ellis, maybe some JJ Redick are splayed wide open in front of an attacking Rubio who didn’t just exceed his career-high of 2 3s, but more than doubled it. The steals are equally impressive for this opportunistic defender who’s been averaging over 2.5 steals/game from February to now. And all this occurred in a mere 34 minutes of play.
In the spirit of keeping things fresh and avoiding that stale cracker (no racial reference) texture, I guess Ricky’s strange:
