Rubio's return to the Wolves shows promise. (USATSI)
Ricky Rubio's return to the Wolves shows promise. (USATSI)

In a 42-game absence by Ricky Rubio, the Minnesota Timberwolves went from scrappy annoyance for NBA teams to the all familiar doormat we've seen year after year when they're working up a new rebuilding plan. The defense became the worst in the NBA during this 42-game stretch, and the offense looked loss while the trio of Mo Williams, Zach LaVine, and Lorenzo Brown tried to execute a diluted playbook. Even in limited minutes, Rubio's return Monday night showed a bit of hope for the competency of what the Wolves are trying to do.

The result was the same: the Wolves lost another game, dropped their record to 8-40 on the season. They're on pace to be the worst Wolves team in franchise history, which is saying something. But 87.5 percent of their games have been without Rubio this season, and he simply makes them a much better team when he's on the floor. As he gets healthier and the playbook is allowed to expand a bit, the Wolves can at least expect to not get run out of the building most nights.

Rubio played 21 minutes and 22 seconds in his return to the court against the Mavs. We saw a lot of the things that make him such a positive force on the court, we saw some poor decisions that could be attributed to rust (or even extreme optimism), and we saw an improvement in the weakest part of his game. Let's take a look at his return and see how it affected the Wolves:

The Scoring

Rubio isn't known as a scorer, probably because he's been so bad at it during his short career. He has a career scoring average of 10.1 points on 37.0 percent from the field and 32.1 percent from 3-point range. His jump shot form has been a mess mechanically, and he's been weak attacking the rim. Even when he has fairly good looks around the basket, there's been a lack of comfort and finishing ability with Rubio around the rim.

The Wolves brought in shooting coach Mike Penberthy this offseason to work on the jumper and the comfort of scoring the ball. While we're still looking at an extremely small sample size for finding any results, you can see a light at the end of the tunnel here.

Last season, Rubio was abysmal shooting the ball for the first third of the season, and hovered at 40.1 percent from the field over his team's final 51 games. He doesn't make or take a lot of 3-point attempts, but would settle for that midrange jumper in the 16-24 foot range. He only shot 30.8 percent from that range. He's taken the majority of his shots from 16-24 feet this season and he's making them at a 58.3 percent clip.

The jumper he showed off against Dallas will show you why.

The biggest thing to take away on a lot of these jumpers is the form, which he's worked on tirelessly with Penberthy. In the past, Rubio's shooting form was off-balance, had a hitch in it, and showed very little consistency. The ACL repair rehab process between his first and second years didn't afford him a great opportunity to spend time on that aspect of the game. As you can see in the video above, even the missed jumpers come with solid shooting form.

Check out this juxtaposition of Rubio's shooting form from last season to this season:

The first jumper has Rubio gathering into his shot sloppily with his feet and legs. He pushes the ball more forward than he does upward and forward, and his body looks like he's leaning into the shot a bit too much. In the second jumper, almost from the same spot, Rubio is upright, has very little motion in his gather, and gets the ball off cleanly with more loft. This is exactly what you want to see out of his shooting motion.

Last season, he shot 35.5 percent on open (4-6 feet of room) jumpers and 33.0 percent on wide-open (6 feet or more) jumpers. It's early but those numbers have improved to 58.3 percent on open jumpers and 44.4 percent on wide-open jumpers. There's much more comfort in his shooting form, no matter what the situation.

Rubio didn't attack much off the dribble against Dallas, but he showed a nice left-handed finish against a solid defender in Devin Harris, and he drew a foul after blowing by J.J. Barea later in the game. This kind of balanced aggressiveness is what he needs to add to his game and make a more regular thing, in order to make him a threat scoring around the basket. He's also a good free throw shooter, so he needs to find ways to get to the line more often.

It wasn't all great scoring decisions by Rubio. Three of his nine shots were bad attempts that he needs to iron out of his game. 

They stemmed from the same scoring issues we saw in his previous three seasons.

The first miss in the video is something that hurts Rubio's scoring accuracy quite a bit. He'll hunt out contact and throw up wild shots before hearing a whistle. You usually hear him yell, "heeeeeey!" as he puts up the shot, hoping it will entice the ref to blow the whistle. These usually come from deeper in the paint or more toward the baseline on wild drives.

The second miss was the next possession. He was pressing to make up for the bad shot before, and he ended up taking a jumper fading to his left. It wasn't the proper straight up and down shooting form we saw in the videos above. It was the only bad jumper he took in this game.

The third miss was Rubio trying to be crafty with a quick reverse layup attempt around the basket with 14 left on the shot clock. He never had an angle and was going against two seven-footers there. He has to keep his dribble alive and find a teammate with a pass if the shot attempt isn't there, which it wasn't.

Overall, Rubio took nine shots. He was 1-of-5 on contested looks (which needs to improve) and was 3-of-4 on uncontested looks (which is encouraging for now).

The Passing

The passing is where Rubio's special talents really come through and it was on display and then some against the Mavs. He had four assists on the night (should have been five) and two free throw assists thanks to aggressive style of pushing the ball in transition. The one thing to notice in a lot of these transition plays is there's a Wolves' player running pretty hard to the rim each time. It sounds like a simple thing, but with Williams and LaVine out there, you rarely saw that because the pass wasn't always being delivered.

Here are some of the transition plays Rubio made by being aggressive and pushing the tempo.

There are some really good passes ahead and a fancy one to Andrew Wiggins that got the rookie to the free throw line. The pass play to Nikola Pekovic is the type of thing that will really help their center and their early offense. When Rubio is in the game, an easy way to get Pekovic going on offense is to get the ball to him early in secondary transition opportunities. Despite being slow, Pek runs right to the low block and sets up position really well.

But you have to get him the ball in those situations. Rubio is often looking to establish Pek early in the offense. When Pekovic can attack the post before the defense is completely set, he's a very effective scorer. It's when the defense can shade him to the area they want that he starts to struggle, especially without a great move turning over his right shoulder.

Playing a lot with Rubio last season, Pek took a higher percentage of his shots early in the shot block. That hasn't been the case so far this season, albeit in a small sample size.

I held this pass out of the montage of transition opportunities, because it's more fun to watch the extended version in which Mavs' broadcasters Mark Followill, Derek Harper, and Jeff Wade marvel at the passing vision of Rubio on this play. In the angle from the baseline on the replay, you can see just how crowded of a window Rubio had to fit that pass in there.

Another big part of what the Wolves can do with Rubio is have an elite pick-and-roll passer. Rubio's one of the best passing point guards, especially when it comes to the pocket pass of dropping the ball between two defenders to the rolling big man.

The crazy thing is on that third one ot Thaddeus Young, Rubio wasn't credited with an assist. I'm not sure why because it fits all of the criteria for an assist, but let's move on.

It wasn't all great passing decisions for Rubio. When he played under Rick Adelman, Rubio used to drive his coach a little crazy with the unnecessary flash on some passes, especially in fourth quarter situations. We had a couple of those moments in his return loss to Dallas. Here are some just poor passing decisions.

Where Rubio falters on the first passing turnover here is Chandler Parsons has read the passing lane perfectly for Rubio's intended dish to Kevin Martin. Instead of showing a little patience and letting Martin adjust to the corner, Rubio tries to force the pass and it ends up going out of bounds.

On the second pass, Rubio does an unnecessary behind-the-back drop-off to the less than agile Pekovic. You have to be precise in hitting someone like Pek with that pass, otherwise he'll never have a chance to corral it. The third pass showed quite a bit of rust for his game too. The Wolves had terrible spacing on the play and Rubio didn't really have an angle to fit the post-entry pass to Pek. He still forced it before it was a clear lane, and Parsons snuck in to grab the easy steal.

Even with it being one game, you can take a lot away from Rubio's time on the court. He's improved some things and he needs to get back up to speed and make smarter decisions in what he tries to do on the court. He'll develop the necessary continuity he was fleshing out in the first five games of the season before he hurt his ankle. Mostly, as he improves, the entire team will be more competitive and have a great chance at avoiding being that doormat in the final 2.5 months of the season.

And this team is just a lot easier to watch with this guy on the floor.