sam cassell is an alien and i love him

Looking back on this NBA offseason, which was simultaneously less and more predictable than one might’ve imagined the Official Offseason of the Recession to be, the most significant moment of the entire summer can be found at 5:13 into Terrence Williams’s flipcam faux-documentary from the NBA Draft.  In the video, Ricky Rubio is hollered at by a group of guys who he shares little in common with except skillz on the basketball court (certainly not race, nationality, language, even age), and responds predictably enough– with a feeble flash of the peace sign.  The awkward white guy is a role I know all too well, so I can’t say I blame Rubio for his lame attempt at ingratiation.  But it’s perhaps fitting that Terrence Williams then inadvertently turns on the social commentary right quick:  “You’re the only person that can say, I’m not going to places.” Blink quick and you might miss it, the whole moment takes just eight seconds.  Sure, all the guys on the bus laugh and Rubio smiles in response to what was surely meant as a relatively benign remark (the comment is, after all, only given eight seconds of attention).  But there are differences of experience and background that allowed Rubio, though of no design of his own, to be in a different position of privilege than all the other guys in the green room on draft night.  In that one moment and with that one admission, Terrence Williams not only calls attention to everything that sets Rubio apart, but he also effectively physicalizes and puts real people and faces behind the racial disparities that have been borne out of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, most notably the age limit.

The fact of the matter is, the age limit does have some undeniably sticky social and racial consequences.  That Rubio had the opportunity to enter the NBA as an 18 year old whereas everyone else on the bus to Madison Square Garden had to donate their time as high profile athlete-interns for their respective colleges (and the shoe companies that sponsor their colleges), the NCAA and CBS for a year or two, that’s a tough pill to swallow, especially when every high schooler-turned-pro except Robert Swift is black.  However, Rubio’s privilege to enter the NBA as an 18 year old exists not out of some insidious Birthers-hatched plan to make the NBA the next frontier on their social agenda, but because the CBA and its age limit possess some glaring loopholes.  David Stern has maintained that the age limit was strictly a business decision, meaning if there’s potential profit-to-be-had, the CBA will find a way to allow for it– a fact which becomes especially convenient for white, international ballers who weren’t likely to lend their services to the NCAA for a year or two anyway.  But five years after the rule was passed and with the international market for young American ballers becoming all the more unaccommodating amidst a global recession, the loopholes in the age limit remain largely untested.  What I then find particularly ironic in the case of Ricky Rubio is that by working completely within the maddeningly inconsistent framework of the CBA, Rubio has proven himself to be, even explicitly stated that he’s no more emotionally or psychologically ready to enter the uncompromising hype factory of the American pro sportsworld than the homegrown crop of players who have known nothing but hype since they were first able to show off their abilities on the court.

From the moment the Wolves drafted Rubio with the #5 pick on June 25th up until Rubio’s announcement leaked on Monday night, I have maintained that Rubio would don a Wolves jersey before the season started– an assumption I based largely on what I deemed to be sound common sense.  The bottom line, I figured, is that if David Kahn and the Wolves brass could jimmy together an ad hoc buyout package that largely compensated for Rubio’s ridiculous Euro-buyout, he’d jump at the opportunity to join the NBA ranks and be that much closer to his second, more lucrative, non-rookie scale contract.  But while I may feel some misinformed bond with Rubio over his hesitantly flashed peace signs and social awkwardness, the bottom line is that he’s an 18 year old kid who (like most 18 year old kids) has never lived away from his parents, calls himself shy, and dude can’t even speak English all that well.  It’d be an understatement to say Rubio doesn’t (and shouldn’t) see things the way I do.

In the end, it wasn’t just one insurmountable hindrance but a confluence of factors (an unfairly inflated buyout; the financial limitations placed on the fifth pick slot by the CBA; the ego hit of slipping to the fifth pick; the influence of family; youth/imaturity) that prevented the formulation of common sense facing Ricky Rubio from falling in step with mine.  Yes, Ricky Rubio did say he’d play in the NBA for free, along with a bunch of other misleading bullshit that has further disparaged my long-battered Twolves pride. But the story here is not that Rubio’s immaturity and petulant and conceited attitude has prevented him from seamlessly integrating into the NBA– but that Rubio’s  immaturity, youth, and capriciousness should be forgiven, not blamed, in his reasoning for favoring the “less complicated” and “less risky” move of staying home over testing the uncharted loopholes of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement.  Of course, the same can be said for Derrick Rose concerning his academic scandal at U-Memphis, or Lebron James accepting some retro jerseys for free as a high schooler in Akron.  The loophole that Rubio faced may have been officially ratified by a group of rich pro sports team owners and the NBA Player’s Association, but it’s no different than the relatively subjective set of limitations facing any young kid who slips up while navigating the pressures of fame, impending wealth, and intense media scrutiny that come along with life in the NBA.  In the end, maybe there wasn’t that much separating Rubio from the rest of his 2009 NBA Draft-mates after all.