For someone who’s battled myriad injuries and, as of now, doesn’t rank in the top half of his position pool, Ricky Rubio ambles his way into the NBA’s rumor mill quite often.
While responding Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher buying that the Minnesota Timberwolves would move, or at least shop, Rubio this coming season, ESPN 1500’s Darren Wolfson revealed, perhaps re-revealed, that the Dallas Mavericks and Sacramento Kings have each tried prying him out of The Bread and Butter State in the semi-recent past:
.@RicBucher "buying" on #Twolves moving Rubio. Mentioned Kings + Mavs. As I said a yr ago, both teams tried. Not now. And Flip not shopping.
— Darren Wolfson (@DWolfsonKSTP) August 28, 2015
Wolfson says this happened a year ago, which makes sense, given the current situations in both Dallas and Sacramento.
The Kings let Isaiah Thomas go last summer and Darren Collison has vacillated between starting and coming off the bench for his entire career. They also went to great lengths for an opportunity to offer Rajon Rondo a one-year contract, so their infatuation with upgrading the point guard position is real.
The Mavericks’ point guard position has been in flux ever since they lost Jason Kidd to the New York Knicks ahead of the 2012-13 season. They rolled the dice on Rondo last year and ended up lucking into Deron Williams this summer. At one point, per ESPN.com’s Tim MacMahon, they were even linked to then-Denver Nuggets point guard Ty Lawson:
There have been rumblings about Mavs trying to trade for Ty Lawson, but I'm told he's not frontburner target due to off-court issues.
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) May 26, 2015
Trade discussions are part and parcel of running an NBA franchise. They happen all the time, and we’ll never know about all of the legitimate dialogues that take place.
But with an increasing number of rumors, substantiated or otherwise, tethering themselves to Rubio, there appears to be a stark disconnect between how much the Timberwolves value him and how much the rest of the league thinks they value him.
Neither the Mavericks nor Kings have been especially flush with tradeable assets over the last year. The Mavericks put their best-possible package together for Rondo, and that wasn’t considered very much at the time. The Kings have some assets, many of which they used to pawn off Carl Landry and Jason Thomspon (now of the Golden State Warriors) on the Philadelphia Sixers, but nothing and no one who would have justified the acquisition of a franchise point guard.
There was also that weird “the Knicks want Rubio” rumor that surfaced a while back, courtesy of Sportando. If the Knicks were, in fact, interested in Rubio, they of all teams have little to nothing outside of Kristaps Porzingis (UNTOUCHABLE) worth offering.
In the event the Timberwolves are willing to move Rubio, despite Wolfson endorsing the contrary, they haven’t fielded an proposal worth biting on.
And if the same, assent-poor teams keep cropping up as rumored trade partners, that’s not going to change anytime soon.
