Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Rubio, Rubio Ru Bi NOOOOO

I'm sure Minnesota sports fans are pretty sick of hearing about Ricky Rubio (the recent Minnesota Timberwolves first round draft pick that went awry). That said, I will make this short and promise not to just regurgitate thoughts, rants, slander, libel, cliches about the economy being bad or opinions from Bill Simmons or any other ESPN/NBA analyst.


If you are unfamiliar with the situation feel free to peruse this article and/or this article for a better understanding of the debauchery that is Ricky Rubio. If you are a Twolves fan that is just pissed off that Rubio not playing for the Wolves this year means the team will not be able to take advantage of sweet Rufio, from the movie "Hook", promotions or chants during the games click here.

My frustration dates back to the NBA draft this past spring.

I believe the new GM, David Kahn, for the Timberwolves did about 95% of his homework for the draft. For the record I am a firm believer that GMs/coaches should do 100% of their homework before their respective drafts...weird concept, I know.

Let me explain.

Everyone knew that Blake Griffin was going first to the Clippers. The next 5 or 6 picks were pretty up in the air. David Kahn was obviously very high on taking Johnny Flynn with one of his back to back picks at 5 or 6. My guess is, like many of the "experts", he figured Ricky Rubio would be drafted in the top four, leaving him with his choice of Tyreke Evans, Hasheem Thabeet or James Harden to complement his dreamy I mean coveted point guard, Johnny Flynn.

On the surface, a solid plan.

Yet, David Kahn forgot to take into account the curse of former Timberwolves GM Kevin McFail. Naturally, the three guys that Kahn planned on choosing from were taken consecutively two, three and four.


Uh oh. Panic mode.

This led to Kahn quickly realizing that he had no choice but to take Ricky Rubio and deal with his whole Spain, buyout situation later. What Kahn failed to do was be quick on his feet and make a smart decision following the Rubio pick. He could not let go of his Tom Brady like man crush (oh wait that is me with a man crush on Tom Brady but we can discuss that at another time) on Johnny Flynn and decided what the heck, I will take him too.

The thoughts, "but wait, Ricky Rubio and Johnny Flynn both play point guard...Ricky Rubio and Johnny Flynn can't play at the same time...it will be difficult to develop both of these guys into great players if they have to split minutes with each other...it's going to be a pain to get Ricky Rubio to come here in the first place and now he will have to compete with a young, further developed player making him want to come to Minnesota even less" failed to surface in Kahn's brain.

You have the fifth and sixth overall picks of a draft, David Kahn nor anybody else on his staff couldn't have stopped and said "hey, maybe we should take 10 minutes and come up with a plan just in case Ricky Rubio does fall to us at number five?" I was better prepared for multiple scenarios during my fantasy football draft than David Kahn. I am a self admitted fantasy football dork, but nevertheless and alwaysthemore.

The moral of the story...

DON'T ASSUME (I will spare you the cliche "assume" saying), but take the extra ten or fifteen minutes for that "what if" situation. Especially if it is your first major assignment for a very public, high profile job.

(Like GM of an NBA team)


One love, one heart

Emac



If you like what I have to say or don't, feel free to follow me on Twitter at @emacdizzle

No comments:

Post a Comment