The 2012-13 Minnesota Timberwolves seem to be a jumbled mess of broken bones, tweaked knees, discombobulated ligaments and disappointed fans that expected them to make the leap to Western Conference contender status. Instead, they lost their best player before the season started while simultaneously still missing their specious second-best player to a knee injury from last year. But they’re 12-11 through 22 games even after losing to the defending NBA champs earlier this week, and now is not the time to sprint before they can crawl, sometimes quite literally in Brandon Roy‘s case. Any pundits looking for Rick Adelman to accelerate the return of their still-recovering franchise point guard have to remember the NBA’s six-month regular season is a marathon instead of a 100 meter dash.
Ricky Rubio played his first minutes in over nine months when he subbed in with a minute left in the first quarter against the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night. It didn’t take him long before he found his old flair, delivering an around-the-back pass less than three minutes after taking the court, and a minute later, we all watched as he sent the ball between his legs and past a bamboozled Elton Brand to a cutting Greg Stiemsma for a bucket. It was one of his nine assists on the night in just 18 minutes. He also added eight points and three steals, with those deceptively long arms and quick hands, but the Mavs still tied it up in regulation. Rubio didn’t sniff the court in overtime, but the ‘Wolves prevailed anyway, 114-106, to notch their fourth win in a row. For long-suffering Timberwolves fans, it must have been a welcome site after losing Rubio last year when he tore two ligaments in his left knee.
But just two nights later, Rubio played only 16 minutes in a loss to the Orlando Magic, and finished 0-for-3 from the floor for zero points, three turnovers, four assists and a steal as the Timberwolves’ winning streak ended at four. Rubio said afterward he felt a lot worse than he did after his first game back, when adrenaline and the fans’ reactions may have masked just how far Rubio has to go before he’s at his peak from last season.
So it was understandable when Adelman decided to rest Rubio this week when the ‘Wolves fell to the defending champs in Miami. The team’s already stipulated that Rubio would be kept out of the second night of back-to-backs while keeping his minutes under 18 a game, per the advice of their doctors. Rubio had actually left the door open that he might play against Miami, and he was on the bench in uniform for the game. But that thinking by Rubio was nixed thanks to Adelman and the Timberwolves’ medical staff, and now some are wondering why the Timberwolves are being so cautious with their point guard wunderkind. Compounding Rubio’s absence is the continued injury woes of other Timberwolves players, most notably their star forward, Kevin Love.
Love injured his hand before the season doing knuckle push-ups, but he was back in the lineup earlier than expected after missing just 10 games; unfortunately, his injury woes didn’t end with the pushups. The night before Rubio’s return, Love bruised the thumb on that same right hand in a win over the Hornets. Love is right-handed, so you can imagine how hard it’s been for him this season shooting the ball. It’s affected his normally efficient stroke. So far this year, Love is connecting on just 36 percent of his looks from the field, and a dismal 21 percent from beyond the three-point line. For his career, Love shoots around 45 percent from the field, and over 35 percent from three-point range. Love also hurt his shoulder and hyperextended his arm in the Timberwolves’ loss to the Magic on Monday.
But Love isn’t the only one hurting on the Timberwolves, and with Rubio playing limited minutes the team is stuck with just three guys manning the backcourt. That’s because Brandon Roy is still out with a sore right knee (something everyone saw coming, but still hurts a team with a paucity of guards), Josh Howard and Malcolm Lee have both hyperextended their right knee in the last week, Chase Budinger tore his left meniscus back in November, and even frontcourt stalwarts Nikola Pekovic and Andrei Kirilenko have caught the injury bug: Pekovic sprained an ankle earlier this year and Kirilenko had back spasms earlier in December. The latter two players have been quite capable even with the dings and bruises of an NBA season. Pekovic’s play on the block and Kirilenko’s overall strengths on the wing, combined with the consistent Luke Ridnour and J.J. Barea in the backcourt, are the primary reasons Minnesota is somehow still above .500 even while missing Rubio, an ailing Love, and all the other injuries they’ve experienced.
But Ricky isn’t going to solve all these banged up guys and Rick Adelman – plus the Minnesota training staff – is right to hold him back until he’s back at full strength. They can’t afford to lose him again like last season, and because of Kirilenko’s production after a year in Russia and Pekovic’s continued offensive maturation in the low block (he’s averaging a career high 15.6 points per game while still shooting over 50 percent this season), they can still afford to wait. This might sound crazy since they’re missing so many guys, especially in their backcourt, but there are still so many games to play with only a little over a quarter of the season finished.
Even optimistic prognostications didn’t have the Timberwolves at sixth in the West through the season’s first 22 games (unless you subscribe to the theory that stats mean everything), and while they could certainly use Ricky’s infectious passing and dazzling defense (not to mention scoring from Love), they’re not overly-reliant on Rubio right now like they were last season when they fell out of playoff contention by going 5-20 after Rubio went down. They’ve had a tremendous bit of luck with players stepping up in place of their injured guys, and it will come in handy later in the season when Love and Rubio are back at 100 percent and need support from their role players. For now, Minnesota fans should just sit back and relax: they have a deeper team than many expected and should be optimistic about a future where everyone is healthy in time for a possible first trip to the playoffs since Kevin Garnett was in town. Rushing Rubio now just doesn’t make sense.
How patient should they be with Rubio and Love?
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