Some new stuff to mull over on the ever-evolving Ricky Rubio front: ESPN.com’s Chad Ford picks up on a story that emerged last weekend about Rubio challenging the sizable buyout with his current team.
Rubio challenging the buyout seemed to cement his entry into this year’s draft — which I still believe to be the case — but Ford draws a slightly different conclusion:
If an arbitrator agrees with Rubio and lowers the buyout, Rubio would likely be headed to the NBA next season. If the arbitrator rules that Rubio’s indemnity payment to the Joventut is reasonable, it may convince Rubio to stay in Spain another year.
Ford also reports that Rubio is headed to the States:
In the meantime, Rubio plans to arrive with his family in the United States on June 13. Rubio has yet to schedule visits with any team, according to the source.
Rubio has already informed teams that he won’t do workouts, but he might visit them to meet the front office and owners. The source said if visits happen, they will be to Los Angeles, Oklahoma City and Sacramento — owners of the first, third and fourth picks in the draft.
The source said it’s likely that Rubio and his camp will skip visits to Memphis. The Grizzlies hold the No. 2 pick, but the source said Rubio is leery about playing in Memphis after two other Spanish players — Pau Gasol and Juan Carlos Navarro — had bad experiences there.
Predictably, Grizzlies fans are already roasting Ford for telling them something they don’t want to hear. I do think Ford was wrong about his earlier report of Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley pushing the drafting of Hasheem Thabeet, and it seems to me that he hasn’t had great Grizzlies sources in the post-Jerry West era. But this information isn’t coming from Grizzlies-connected sources. It’s presumably coming from a Rubio-connected source, and since I haven’t seen it strongly disputed anywhere, I think Griz fans shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it.
