The first thing you hear when you click play on this video is people going HE’S COMING, HE’S COMING. Spanish basketball phenom Ricky Rubio rides down an escalator, and the people are all HE’S WEARING A BLAZER AND A SHIRT AND SHOES, AND HE’S WEARING A HAT AND HUMANS ARE NEAR HIM. Seconds later, people are wooing and hooting, and some guy says LOOK AT THE PAGEANTRY. The pageantry of someone wearing clothes and using an escalator to change floors and walking in an airport.
Such is the new life of Rubio, picked fifth overall in the 2009 NBA draft, as he replaces Kent Hrbek and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the (assumedly shared) consciousness of Minnesota. After walking through an airport (and this is not a joke), Fox Sports is writing about how his personality is a defibrillator to a franchise in need of life. Imagine the Minnesota Timberwolves as the Washington Nationals and Rubio as Stephen Strasburg, only Spanish and biting a basketball. Did anybody describe what Strasburg was wearing when he landed in the D.C. airport? Did he have two functioning arms?
I’m hoping Rubio turns out to be a huge deal, just so one of the biggest stars in the NBA will look and act like Chachi from “Happy Days”.
