The rumors ended up becoming news and the Cleveland Cavaliers officially announced the return of Spanish point guard Ricky Rubio, who has been recovering for months from a knee injury.
Rubio thus returns to the Cavaliers in which he shone last year until a serious knee injury took him off the track and led him to be transferred to the Indiana Pacers in an operation that made more sense financially than sportswise for both franchises.
The Spaniard was enjoying a great moment with the Cleveland Cavaliers, which was one of the revelation teams of last year in the NBA, when at the end of December he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. The same injury that he had suffered in 2012 as a rookie in the ranks of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Until his injury in December, Rubio was performing at a magnificent level and was pampered by the team as the veteran and calm leader who had to guide a squad full of young talent. Rubio was averaging 13.1 points, 4.1 rebounds and 6.6 assists in 28.5 minutes per game.
But the numbers did not exactly reflect his weight in the locker room, since Rubio -along with Kevin Love- was the mentor of a very promising squad with youngsters crying out for a place like Darius Garland, Jarrett Allen (the two All-Stars in the past year) or Evan Mobley.
In February and with no options to play for the remainder of the season, Rubio was traded to the Pacers in exchange for Caris LeVert. One of the keys to understanding Rubio’s transfer from the Cavaliers’ perspective was that the 31-year-old player’s contract ended at the end of the season and therefore he was a free agent to fully decide his future.
In recent years, Rubio has reached an extraordinary point of maturity, confidence and inspiration that allowed him to win the 2019 World Cup in China with the Spanish team (he was the MVP of the tournament) and to be the top scorer at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
In the NBA, on the other hand, he has not had much luck with his teams. He spent many years in teams with few aspirations (Minnesota Timberwolves) and left other franchises just as they began to look to the top (Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns), after Rubio was instrumental in cementing those projects.
