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Ricky Rubio
Ricky Rubio
Welcome to 2021, the year we finally move forward again. The only question now is, how? We interviewed some key Twin Cities stakeholders, community voices, and leaders who will be central to what happens–or doesn't–in the year to come.
We’ve all seen the clip from that Lakers game a few years back. Dour Russian guard Alexey Shved was going 1 for 8 in the middle of another losing streak in the middle of another go-nowhere season, and Ricky Rubio tousled his hair and instructed, “Alexey, change this face. Be happy. Enjoy!” The oddly adorable moment turned Rubio into a meme of buoyancy.
But if you’ve followed Rubio’s career more closely, you understand that he knows heartbreak well. In 2012, he tore his ACL at the peak of a magical rookie season; in 2016, he lost his mother to lung cancer a year after losing his then head coach Flip Saunders to Hodgkin’s lymphoma; and when he was traded away by the Suns this fall, it was the third time an organization unceremoniously dumped him.
When he was first introduced to Minnesota, back in 2011, fans swarmed him at the airport. Now, almost a decade later, he was reintroduced to the local media on a Zoom call in the middle of a pandemic. After answering a flurry of basketball questions, he talked about how his innate optimism served him in 2020.
“It’s tough,” Rubio says, “but at the end of the day, I can’t complain—I have a job, I get paid, I have my family healthy.”
For Rubio, positive thinking begets positive action. A good attribute for a point guard, the very best of which need to be effortlessly in tune with everybody—his teammates, the coaching staff, the refs, the crowd, even the players on the opposing team.
“There is a big wave going on right now,” he says, “with COVID, with social injustice, and you have to be able to learn from it. There is something going on in the world, and we have to help each other to get better, as a community and as human beings.”
Clearly, at this point in his life, Rubio understands that sometimes changing your face is an act of sheer will.
“I hope we can play in front of all the fans here,” he says. “They deserve to be healthy, to be in a good spirit, and to always think positive.”
This article originally appeared in the January 2021 issue.
