The Rubio in Spain Stays Mainly In, Well, Spain

Ricky Rubio, the international basketball phenom, was selected with the fifth overall pick in the National Basketball Association draft earlier this year. The first four teams passed on him for various reasons, but one that surely scared them away from Rubio was his existing contract with a Spanish basketball club. The Minnesota Timberwolves, however, elected to use their fifth pick on the young, playmaking point guard.

One could applaud the Timberwolves for taking the risk on Rubio, but the woeful club was recently dealt the bad news that Ricky Rubio will be staying in Spain for at least the next two years.

Rubio apparently has signed a six year deal with Barcelona's Catalan club, after they put up the $5 million to buyout his contract. The NBA has rules in place which will only allow a team to pay up to $500,000 to buyout an international player from his contract. Hamstrung by this rule, Minnesota was not able to release Ricky Rubio from his deal, but the Barcelona club faced no such difficulty and managed to keep him out of the NBA for at least a couple more years.

This raises the question of how practical the $500k cap is for NBA teams. The rule is surely put into place to prevent the large market teams, such as New York or Los Angeles, from having a carte blanche to the finest international talent. The Minnesota Timberwolves, though, are not a large market team.

Actually, Minnesota is a financially-strapped club and may have had a difficult time coming up with the $5 million required to have released Rubio from his Spanish contract. The team did work diligently to come up with a package, including endorsement opportunities, but were simply not able to get it done.

The sad situation for Minnesota is that they used their fifth overall pick on a player who is guaranteed not to be in the NBA for at least two years. The Timberwolves could have really used a young, promising player like Ricky Rubio to draw increased fan interest and even tap into the valuable international market. The team did draft a second point guard with the draft's number six spot in Jonny Flynn, but many experts agree that Flynn does not offer the upside of Rubio.

Unfortunately, with regard to the Rubio situation, the T'wolves are now left out in the cold for at least the next couple of years. But at least a Minnesota-based team should be used to the cold.