One crazy trade every NBA team should make

13. San Antonio Spurs

Whatever the Spurs do, besides signing Pau Gasol, is good. It’s good for them, and it’s good for the player they pick up. It’s generally good for people like us who watch them as well. The Spurs make things good. They are the definition of a thing goodizer.

Sure “Great. The Spurs did it again” is a bit of a tired trope, and it’s not necessarily accurate. But it feels like it is, and I think the collective passion of the world pushing that narrative forward might be what we need to get this thing going.

Ricky Rubio is in a rough situation. He’s a man between eras. He carries Khan’s expectations of Kevin Love’s supermax contract with the new era of Towns, Thibs, Wiggins, and LaVine. What he was supposed to be is not what he is, and what he is is the fourth starter on a losing team. He’s still young, and he still has remarkable skills in very specific areas, but the Timberwolves are not in position to design a system to make the most of them. They are in the growing process. Bound feet don’t grow.

San Antonio, on the other hand, have the room. Tony Parker has fallen far off from 2013 when he was a top-five point guard in the league. He still has fun flash games, but the flashes are fading and falling further and further afield. He’s currently only scoring 2.3 more points per game than Rubio, and Rubio is most maligned for his lack of scoring. Aldridge needs shots. Kawhi needs shots. Pau Gasol, Patty Mills, and Davis Bertans need shots. Rubio doesn’t want to shoot.

This could work. Maybe it won’t, but it’d be fun to find out.

Tony Parker to Minnesota Timberwolves for Ricky Rubio