His very first steps in the EuroLeague hinted strongly at the unique player and consummate pro that Ricky Rubio would become.
Remembering when Ricky Rubio first set foot on a EuroLeague court
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Ricky Rubio turned 16 three days before his first EuroLeague game, on October 24, 2006, when Joventut Badalona hosted mighty Panathinaikos Athens in a special season-opening game, one night ahead of the rest of the competition.
The hype around Rubio had already been building since he debuted in the Spanish League almost a year earlier, a week before his 15th birthday.
Now, with Joventut having qualified for the EuroLeague by winning the previous season's EuroCup championship, Rubio was stepping up to the big time. When he entered the court midway through the first quarter for Joventut, he became the first EuroLeague participant born in the 1990s and, at the time, the fifth-youngest player ever to appear in a game.
But it's what happened soon after he entered the game, which I witnessed while sitting under one basket at courtside, that stuck with me all these years.
With his team leading 12-5 and forcing an early Panathinaikos timeout, Rubio came on court as Joventut's substitute point guard. His first task was to bring the ball up the court, which sounds simple except that guarding him was Dimitris Diamantidis, whose long-time career steals record may finally fall this week. Diamantidis swiped at the youngster the long arms that earned him the nickname Spiderman in Greece. Rubio seemed unfazed by the attention of the EuroLeague's consensus best perimeter ball-hawk ever, winner of five Best Defender trophies? as voted by the head coaches. Instead of a steal, Diamantidis got called for a foul.
Joventut's next basket, and Rubio's first, is remarkable to watch still. It came on a sideline inbounds, with Rubio set on the far low block near the basket. He was in a crouch, poised to run the inbounds play, with Diamantidis ready to follow him wherever Rubio darted. But Rubio never took another step. Lubos Barton saw him over the entire defense and lobbed an alley-oop pass direct from the sideline that Rubio kissed off the glass while everyone else on the floor watched. It was a remarkable basket for anyone and more so for being Rubio's first in the EuroLeague at such a precocious age.
Panathinaikos would rally from 24 points behind and also ruin the EuroLeague debut of Rudy Fernandez that night, then go on to win three of the next five continental titles. But the poised first steps of Ricky Rubio proved memorable, too.
A teenage steals machine
Rubio made 3 steals in 12 minutes that night while Diamantidis had 2 in almost 33 minutes. That's a statistic that is worth revisiting because Rubio went on to average 3.2 steals over his 16 appearances that season.
No EuroLeague player has averaged as many steals in any season since then. Indeed, Rubio's league-leading 3.2-steal average in 2006-07 is the most ever by a player appearing in 16 or more EuroLeague games. He's bracketed on the list of best per-game stealers by greats like the late Dejan Milojevic, Riccardo Pittis and Manu Ginobili. But Rubio did it as a 16-year-old first-timer on the continent's biggest stage.
Even more impressive is that Rubio played just 18 minutes per night that season. That worked out to a rate of 6.8 steals per 40 minutes, far above other great stealers that season like Fred House (4.0 per 40 minutes) and Pablo Prigioni (3.9). Indeed, no other player has ever surpassed 4.9 steals per 40 minutes, and very few were over 4.0, most of them in the EuroLeague's very first season, 2000-01, and most for Italian teams at a time when scorers in that country often credited the closest defender with a steal for an unforced turnover by the offensive team.
The bottom line is no single-season steals leader ever came close to Rubio's 6.8 steals per 40 minutes in his debut season. He might not have had the body then to challenge much older defenders as a scorer, but Rubio's remarkable reading of the game was already evident on the side of the floor where that is most difficult: defense.
Rubio's flashy handles and passing would soon win him global followers, but his world-class on-the-ball defense was just as valuable as he climbed the ranks of international basketball.
Accomplishments to match his accolades
Rubio's star rose quickly from there. Two seasons later, he was a part-time starter as Joventut lifted the 2008-09 EuroCup trophy, averaging 7.6 points, 4.5 assists, 2.7 rebounds and 2.4 steals in 21 minutes per game. His steals total of 38 led the league. He returned to the EuroLeague in 2008-09 but was injured to start it and barely played as Joventut bowed out after 10 regular season games.
Rubio joined FC Barcelona for the 2009-10 season and was essential to the club claiming just its second continental title ever. He started all 22 games that season with averages of 6.8 points, 4.1 assists, 2.4 rebounds and 1.4 steals in 21 minutes. He scored his EuroLeague career high of 19 points in Game 4 of the playoffs as Barca knocked out archrival Real Madrid to reach the Final Four.
In Paris, he put up 10 points, 8 assists, 4 rebounds and 2 steals in a double-digit semifinal victory over CSKA Moscow, playing 32 minutes and proving instrumental in limiting the great J.R. Holden to 7 points. He played less in the championship game, 17 minutes, but scored 9 points to just 10 for that season's MVP, Milos Teodosic of Olympiacos Piraeus. Barcelona won easily, 86-68, and Rubio became a EuroLeague champion at 19 years old.
By then, he had already won an Olympic silver medal and EuroBasket gold with the Spanish national team in 2008 and 2009, respectively. He would win EuroBasket again in 2011 and add the World Cup as MVP in 2019.
His jump to the NBA in 2011 saw Rubio play 698 games over 12 seasons for the Minnesota Timberwolves, Utah Jazz, Phoenix Suns and Cleveland Cavaliers. He overcame a serious knee injury and at one point started in 454 out of 455 games between the 2013-14 and 2019-20 seasons.
Now, more than 17 years since he first stepped on a EuroLeague court, fans will get to see again what made him so special to begin with and Rubio will get a chance to help Barca's push for its first continental crown since he left.