If Wolves trade Rubio to Knicks, bobblehead night will be really weird

By Jeff Caplan
Published

Five years into Ricky Rubio's NBA career and the Minnesota Timberwolves might be ready to entertain trade proposals for the point guard. Rubio is a fascinating ball-handler and one of the few players in the league who, on any given night, on any given possession, might do something so spectactular with the basketball that you swear you've never seen it before.

If only Rubio could learn to shoot better than 36 percent and score more than a dozen points a game -- which he's never averaged in his career -- he'd be a fixture on the All-Star team. But Rubio has never learned to shoot with any consistency. This season he's at 36.1 percent overall and 29.2 percent from beyond the arc. He's averaging 9.7 points a game. And even with athletic, young talents Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns playing alongside him, Rubio's 8.6 assists a game are nice, but hardly as eye-popping as his passes can be.

So are the Wolves ready to give up on their Ricky Rubio Rubik's Cube? Well, not if you believe in advance giveaway planning. The first 5,000 fans inside the Target Center Saturday night will receive a free Ricky Rubio bobblehead. Saturday happens to be two days after the NBA's trade deadline.

The visiting opponent on Saturday happens to be none other than the New York Knicks, the team that wanted to deal for Rubio as far back as 2009 when the 18-year-old Spaniard wasn't particularly keen on the Timberwolves taking him with the fifth overall pick. 

On Monday, Frank Isola of the New York Daily News reported that there is a feeling around the league that Minnesota could move Rubio before the deadline. The Knicks, of course, need a point guard, a showman preferably, to showcase on the Madison Square Garden stage with Carmelo Anthony and stunning rookie forward Kristaps Prozingis.

The Knicks, as Isola pointed out, don't have much in the way of assets that figure to pry Rubio from the Wolves. But if Knicks president Phil Jackson did somehow find a way to bring Rubio to the Big Apple, well, Saturday's Ricky Rubio bobblehead giveaway would need just a slight alteration to the uniform.