Las Vegas • As the Utah Jazz’s summer league team was in the second quarter of Tuesday’s game against Portland in Cox Pavilion, Ricky Rubio was but a few thousand feet away, in a conference room at the adjoining Thomas & Mack Center.
In an event that marked the official end to his two years as the Jazz’s starting point guard, Rubio was being introduced as the new starting point guard of the Phoenix Suns.
A day after the Jazz introduced Bojan Bogdanovic and Mike Conley — the latter the man whose acquisition sealed Rubio’s departure — the Spaniard was explaining how he went from the point guard of a team that was among the best in the Western Conference to a group trying to end a run of lottery appearances, from an outfit that won 50 games a year ago to one that won just 19.