March 27, 2008 2:21 am  |  51 Comments

Links: Remember Ricky Rubio?

He’s ba-ack…

by Lang Whitaker

With the NCAA Tournament in full swing, every time I tune into a game, the first thing I think about is how many college games I didn’t watch this season. I’ve been so tuned in to the NBA that I haven’t seen a lot of these top prospects play much at all, so in a way it’s been fun to see a lot of these guys for the first time and to formulate opinions about them.

The second thing I think about is Ricky Rubio, and I wonder how he’d fare against this level of competition. (Pretty well, I suspect.)

Who is Ricky Rubio? Hopefully you remember the name. I went to Spain about a year ago to hang with him and see him play, and I came away completely impressed. I wrote a feature in the mag and a long post here about him.

After we blew up his spot, Ricky kept doing what he’s always done, dominating games against men a decade older than him. His stock was already pretty high, especially in Europe, but now it seems to be rather high over here as well.

And he’s still just 17 years old.

Now the spotlight’s finding him everywhere. I got an email a few weeks ago from Canal+, the European mega-network, and they wanted to interview me for a special they were making about Ricky, with his family’s permission, for a show called “Informe Robinson,” which seems to be something about informing the former soccer pro Michael Robinson, the host, about a subject. It aired the other night and made YouTube immediately, of course. You can get a view of the SLAM Dome…and I take no credit for my hair being all slicked back. That’s what you get when you ask me to show up anywhere at 9:00 a.m.

By the way, Robinson asks me about going all the way to Barcelona and not “interview”ing Ricky. And technically, that’s true, because I never sat down with a recorder and asked questions and got answers. The team has rules, after all, and Ricky was only 16 at the time. But I spent two days with him, his mom, his dad, his brother, his sister, had meals with them, went to games with them, had coffee with them. Maybe I didn’t “interview” him, but I learned plenty.

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This story is filed under: Blogs, NBA, The Links

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  • MagicMike2k7 Posted: Mar.27 at 2:30 am
    nice

  • Justin Adler Posted: Mar.27 at 2:41 am
    For not having an ‘interview’ that Ricky Rubio article was one of my favorite articles in recent memory.

  • Mush Posted: Mar.27 at 3:50 am
    Ricky Rubio or Jesse Dunn?

  • Mush Posted: Mar.27 at 3:50 am
    whose better?

  • peteb80 Posted: Mar.27 at 5:18 am
    That “phone conversation” is hilarious. Was there anyone at the other end at all? Or were you really talking to the guy? I’m absolutely looking forward to seeing Ricky play on the biggest stage, I just hope you guys (el media) don’t overinflate his ego until then. Also, they don’t interview him either or is there another part of the video?

  • James the balla Posted: Mar.27 at 5:41 am
    He dont look all that good.

  • Solito Posted: Mar.27 at 6:43 am
    By the time he enters the draft, he can play NBA Ball in Barca…

  • Bigi Posted: Mar.27 at 7:13 am
    Lang,you sleek son of a B***h!

  • KA Posted: Mar.27 at 7:24 am
    what the hell happened in that last play?!!

  • Randy Brown Posted: Mar.27 at 7:53 am
    The cruel basketball gods, they’re what happened on that last play

  • TADOne Posted: Mar.27 at 7:54 am
    Lang is funny as hell looking into the camera and smiling slyly like there is some inside joke or something only he and the camera man know about.

  • Eboy Posted: Mar.27 at 8:42 am
    Whenever I hear the name Ricky Rubio I either get visions of a Latin Rick Rubin or a B-Boy from the Bronx from back in the day. Also, is is the lighting or are Lang’s eyebrows pencil thin or dyed blond? Where’s your brows, brother?

  • karan Posted: Mar.27 at 8:44 am
    i need english subtitles for the rest of the video

  • Ryan Jones Posted: Mar.27 at 9:35 am
    Every time Lang looks into the camera, an Amazonian tribesman loses his soul. Or something.

  • Marcel Mutoni Posted: Mar.27 at 9:45 am
    wait…lang is white?!!?!?

  • Slobodan Chutzpah Posted: Mar.27 at 9:56 am
    That. Was. Hilarious.

  • Sparker Posted: Mar.27 at 10:27 am
    mr. whitaker… loved that smile when he referred to slam as “prestigious”

  • Sparker Posted: Mar.27 at 10:30 am
    but wait a minute… will he start ahead of calderon?

  • riggs Posted: Mar.27 at 12:08 pm
    harry potter can ball son!

  • AbdAs-Salaam Posted: Mar.27 at 12:44 pm
    There are no basketball gods, there is only one God.

  • Bro. D. Posted: Mar.27 at 12:54 pm
    I like the Austin powers music during the hl reel. I kept expecting Rubio to start dancing with with a band in some 70’s flat with Lang in the background.

  • John E. Sanford Posted: Mar.27 at 12:56 pm
    Awesome stuff Lang.

  • Jas Posted: Mar.27 at 1:37 pm
    Best player not in the NBA? Number 1 Pick? That’s ridiculous. Rubio is nothing special. I’d take Brandon Jennings over him any day.

  • Arvydas Sabonis Posted: Mar.27 at 1:50 pm
    The future!

  • TADOne Posted: Mar.27 at 2:35 pm
    I’m waiting for an adult star named Ricky Rubio. Stan Van Jeremy can be his agent.

  • rav Posted: Mar.27 at 2:46 pm
    I love how when Michael Robinson says ‘Lang Whitaker’ in Spanish, and then says it normally when he speaks on the phone!

  • Son of Shawn Posted: Mar.27 at 3:27 pm
    So, I suposse that Jas and James the Balla at 15 y.o. were playing against pros, and at 16 were the Spanish League and Euroleague leaders of steals per game, ok the kid isn´t very athletic but he´s something special

  • Son of Shawn Posted: Mar.27 at 3:28 pm
    Deshawn Stevenson dixit: “that boy is overrated”

  • jbn74sb Posted: Mar.27 at 3:38 pm
    I hereby challenge Lang to a forehead fight.

  • Lang Whitaker Posted: Mar.27 at 4:18 pm
    Wait, how do you say my name in Spanish?

  • jbn74sb Posted: Mar.27 at 5:42 pm
    Mi nombre.

  • RV Posted: Mar.27 at 6:29 pm
    call him ricky “jumpstop” rubio, he had that jump stop down as a little kid, and he used it to help him hit that shot too. From that clip he seems like Manu, mixed in with Bones Barry with more emphasis on passing

  • jeremy Posted: Mar.27 at 6:45 pm
    he got some good handles man…he will be in the league someday…

  • Zee! Posted: Mar.27 at 6:46 pm
    Blowin up the spot like Fred did to Rollo…..

  • James Posted: Mar.27 at 7:03 pm
    At the start, when Lang is holding the phone, and he looks at the camera and grins cheekily, it looks so much like he’s prank calling someone

  • boobie_gibson Posted: Mar.27 at 8:58 pm
    In one of these pictures in there, he looks like Jose Calderon

  • Hubert Posted: Mar.27 at 10:31 pm
    lang isn’t that fat after all.

  • TC Posted: Mar.28 at 1:53 am
    Why does Lang look like a villain in superhero movies?

  • hursty Posted: Mar.28 at 4:31 am
    how tall is he? hes never seen the inside of a weight room yet obviously… he’s only 17 though. Slam has shotgun on interviews as a rookie though hehe.

  • Squirrel7 Posted: Mar.28 at 10:50 am
    I saw him play for his Spanish league team against Guildford Heat in the ULEB cup, and his style was so effortless, even against guys far older than him. He certainly needs to bulk up, but he could easily be a Shaun Livingston-esque player (hopefully minus the inuries).

  • tike Posted: Mar.28 at 12:45 pm
    whens the kid coming to the states!!?

  • hursty Posted: Mar.30 at 5:49 am
    never tike. never in the history of never occuring neverness.

  • Kieran Posted: Mar.31 at 12:38 pm
    i dont speak spanish so i dont know what was being said but to use the names michael jordan and magic in relation to this dude is crazy.

  • Chris Posted: Apr.6 at 9:37 pm
    Not really impressed with this dude. I agree with ^, no way should he be compared to Magic or Jordan!

  • SLAM ONLINE | » Band of Brothers: Volume 1 Posted: Apr.10 at 1:33 pm
    [...] After a much needed mid-afternoon siesta, I headed over to the gym with my main man; we’ll call him Jim (Team USA on-base caretaker, US Army official, and all around ridiculous personality). We caught the end of Spain-Greece. The US had already lost to Greece, and the Greeks were methodically Socratizing the over-matched Spaniards (no Ricky Rubio—he’s like, trying to win an ACB league championship or something…by the way, watching Lang on Canal Plus while in Germany was a highlight of my first afternoon’s down time…). [...]

  • SLAM ONLINE | » Links: ESPN The Mag Introduces Us To Ricky Rubio? Posted: Jul.7 at 8:27 pm
    [...] You know what? Come to think of it, I had heard of Ricky Rubio. I heard about him two years ago, in fact. And then, about 15 months ago, I read a huge feature on him in some magazine…what was that…oh, it was in SLAM! And when that feature dropped, I wrote a very long post about Ricky on SLAMonline. Then, just a few months ago, I was interviewed on Canal, the huge TV network in Europe, about Ricky. And even they talked about how SLAM did a big story on Ricky. [...]

  • jaspin Posted: Aug.10 at 8:57 pm
    No one compares Ricky with Magic or Jordan in the video. The only thing that Aito (current coach of the Spanish national team) says is that big stars, like Magic or Jordan, had to deal with the preassure of fame before being true big stars. The only thing I can say about Ricky is that I have never seen a guy his age play the way he does.

  • luis Posted: Aug.12 at 8:27 pm
    Ricky´s stats against China: 1 point, 4 rebouds, 4 assists, 5 steals.

  • pop ( thailand ) Posted: Aug.27 at 3:33 am
    he is nice

  • faye Posted: Sep.1 at 5:12 am
    ..♥♥♥i l0ve him!!!♥♥♥..

  • ThaiGirl Posted: Sep.12 at 2:43 pm
    i love in Thailand people like him ,but i love^^.. i need your address him so.. .
    someone have? pls give me

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