Ricky’s recovery hasn’t been as quick as I had hoped, but it’s probably what I expected. He looks good with lateral movement — his defense and ability to stay in front of opposing guards looks almost as good as it did pre-injury. And he hasn’t had problems moving around the perimeter. His limitations are most noticeable when he jumps. He doesn’t have the same lift that he used to. As you would expect, this had dramatically influenced his shooting %s (which is backed up by the above data).

Check out what Ricky had to say in a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune article:

“Rubio is still working hard to get his left leg back to full strength.

“I’m moving pretty good side to side,” he said. “But then, when I have to power, when I have to jump, I don’t feel like I jump.”

“Rubio joked about jumping, looking down and seeing he was two inches off the floor. “I never jumped too high, I’m going to be honest,” he said. “[But] right now I can’t even dunk. I’m not going to say I was doing 360s [before the injury] and all that stuff. But I was able to dunk.”

Rubio said he is still working on getting the confidence back in his game, to the point where he can trust his left leg to hold up when he drives to the hoop. “Sometimes I want to penetrate and I don’t feel like I have the power to do it,” he said. “Maybe I have it. But it’s like, sometimes, that confidence has to come back. … So you have to try to find some space to work on that, then do it in the games, too.”"

Hopefully the jumping power will return more quickly to an athletic specimen like Derrick Rose than it has for lil Ricky. But Ricky has heard those AP comparisons:

“It will come, though maybe not as fast as Rubio would like. Especially after having watched what Vikings running back Adrian Peterson did this fall less than one year removed from knee surgery.

“The only one who can do it like that is Adrian Peterson,” Rubio joked. “That’s a bad example for me, because it makes me look bad.”