Why Rubio's Threat Means More Than Yi's Did

As you've heard by now (if you're a fan of one of the crummy teams in the league), Spanish wunderkind Ricky Rubio's camp has put out there that he doesn't want to play in Memphis or Oklahoma City ... the two teams which happen to be selecting No. 2 and No. 3.

No one can really ascertain why, say, Sacramento would be better for Ricky than OKC. I mean, Sacramento is the worst team in the league, and it (um) has its detractors as a mecca of enjoyment among the NBA ranks. But whatever. Rarely do Kings fans have someone holding out on their behalf.

Regardless, does this threat mean anything? Can Rubio and his infamous agent Dan Fegan -- you know him for such hits as Yi Jianlian's La-Z-Boy Workouts, Anderson Varejao's Hold-out and Al Harrington's Trade Demands -- actually dictate his draft selection?

Yes! A thousand times yes! ... Well, maybe. Fegan certainly stands a better chance working for Rubio than he did with Yi.

* Yi had to come over. The Spanish ACB is a great league, the second best club league (behind the NBA) in the world. You can have a lucrative, fulfilling career in the ACB, especially if you're a budding Spanish heartthrob. The Chinese Basketball Association is a few steps below. And by a few I mean a few hundred. And by a few hundred I mean a few hundred thousand. There's a reason Sun Yue would rather play for the Los Angeles D-Fenders than be the CBA's biggest star: because, frankly, the CBA has zero notoriety outside of China. Yi would have been completely wasted as a talent and personality there. This would be like Tyreke Evans giving up the NBA to play in the semi-pro Alaskan league.

* China needed Yi in the NBA. Lest we forget Beijing 2008. China controlled whether Yi stayed or went, to a degree. And China needed another basketball star on the Olympic team. It would have been pound foolish to force Yi to stay in China because Milwaukee drafted him -- the stateside exposure was too great an asset, even if Wisconsin was less ideal than California.

* Rubio's NBA team has to play ball with DKV Joventut. Yi had no contractual strings -- his threat held that he could sign a new club contract in China. Ricky actually has a contract covering next season. To get to the NBA, he has to buy his way out. Fegan has insisted Rubio will reach a buy-out agreement. How does that stance change if one of the non-preferred teams presses their luck? At any point before June 15, Rubio can decide to pull out and stay in Spain at least another year. Even after June 15, Rubio can decide to say in Spain. See: Vasquez, Fran.

* Fegan usually gets what he wants. Fegan is growing a bad rep -- superagent Aaron Goodwin alludes to it in a talk with The Oklahoman -- but he actually has been pretty successful in getting his clients what they want. Al Harrington went to New York, after all. And Fegan got Varejao what he wanted from Cleveland a few summers ago ... to the substantial pain of Cleveland. Teams shouldn't look at the Yi saga and assume this all means nothing.

(By the way, that Oklahoman story says OKC boss Sam Presti hasn't had problems with Fegan in terms of getting Rubio to town for a work-out. Rubio hasn't visited yet, but it appears this might be a non-story.)