Anybody who has followed European basketball, international competition, or even perused YouTube over the past few years already knows the set of tools and abilities Rudy Fernandez possesses.
Coming into Wednesday's game at Miami, Fernandez had already scored double figures in six of his first seven games, but it was in this game in which he had his first defining moment in the NBA.
He comes off a high pick above the left elbow from Travis Outlaw, goes around the help defender Udonis Haslem and as defender Daequan Cook overcommits to his change his direction, Fernandez spins back middle to hit an 18-footer to extend Portland's lead to six points with 44.9 seconds left in the game. The bucket gave him his 13th and 14th points in the 4th quarter.
Three small things that shot was:
1. Clutch
2. A creation of his own shot
3. Not quite the decisive dagger
Shooting 48.1% from the field and 45.7% from beyond the arc, Fernandez is third in season FIC amongst rookies with 84.3 and easily has the highest FIC40 (14.7) amongst the top-10. Only Jamal Crawford has made more 3-pointers per minute played and is +14 for the season (+32 if you throw out his -18 against Utah).
Comparing him to his fellow shooting guards on a FIC40 basis, he's trailing just Wade and Kobe Bryant.
He of course isn't anywhere close to those two and he even has a long ways to go to really be Portland's Manu Ginobili because with the exception of that clutch bucket, the rest of his offense came off assists on Wednesday.
Fernandez moves better without the ball than he does creating off the dribble, a touchstone of Ginobili's game and something that becomes increasingly critical in May and June.
But because of Brandon Roy and I believe eventually Jerryd Bayless, the need for Fernandez to work off the dribble consistently will largely be unnecessary.
Case in point; following the Wade dunk in which he dribbled down the lane on both Outlaw and LaMarcus Aldridge, they then ran down the shot clock before Roy was the one to drive to the bucket and with the Miami defense collapsing, kicked it to Steve Blake for a corner 3-pointer.
He's not really a rookie given how many years he has played at top levels in Europe and internationally, but he's also not Arvydas Sabonis coming over at 30. He is still just 23 and is clearly the best rookie on a Blazers team that has four excellent ones (Oden, Bayless and Batum) that will comprise the best single-team class in history.
And although their core long term will remain Roy, Oden, and Aldridge, Fernandez is one of many secondary pieces that the Blazers will use to dislodge the superduperstar model (article forthcoming next week) that Elrod Enchilada has been plugging away at our brains for several years now.
- Christopher Reina is the executive editor of RealGM