PORTLAND, ORE. — More than two months into his long-awaited first season in the NBA, Wolves point guard Ricky Rubio no longer is a regular fixture on ESPN's "SportsCenter" highlights, as he was almost nightly in the season's opening weeks.
His shooting percentage has dropped to 36.4 because of his share of 1-for-8 and 5-for-16 nights.
He hasn't reached double figures in assists in his past 12 games after doing so in eight of 10 games immediately before that.
Has the opposition figured out his game and adjusted, as Houston coach Kevin McHale suggested would happen after teams got their first look at him?
Has he hit the proverbial rookie wall 37 games into this brutal 66-game season unlike any other in the NBA, let alone the comparatively leisurely 42-game seasons he played in Europe the past two years?
"I think it's all of that," Wolves coach Rick Adelman said. "They're definitely playing him differently. They're playing him physical. In our league, the coaches scout well and they figure things out. And we just haven't shot the ball very in a lot of games when he's out there, or he'd have a lot more assists than he has."
Teams increasingly have played off Rubio on pick-and-rolls -- the lifeblood of the Wolves offense -- by sending defenders underneath screens rather than over the top of them, daring Rubio to beat them with his shooting.
He is shooting 21.7 percent in the first three games of this rugged four-game Western trip that ends Saturday night in Portland after going 1-for-8 each night in games against the Clippers and Lakers.