In the end, the Celtics got Rajon Rondo for somewhere between their price and Rondo’s reported price, but here’s the important thing: They didn’t have to get him for someone else’s price.
Had Rondo been allowed to hit the free agent market, even as a restricted player, there’s no telling who might have thrown a huge front-loaded contract at him, which would have forced the Celtics to go even higher for his services.
Instead the Celtics locked up their 23-year-old point guard for a reported five years and an average of $11 million per season. That’s at a rate commensurate with (if not a tick or two below) the other top point guards in the NBA for what should be his prime seasons. If you had already come to the conclusion that Rondo was in that echelon of players, then this deal is essentially a no-brainer.
Still, there are those who have their doubts about Rondo. A smattering of the diverse opinions about the young point guard:
He can’t shoot. He’s the best young point guard in the NBA. He’s a great defender. He reaches too much. He was just along for the ride in 2007-08. He doesn’t get enough credit for running a team with three superstars from other teams. He was the Celtics' best player in the playoffs. He was the reason they lost to Orlando.
It’s impossible to not have an opinion about Rondo, and it’s entirely possible that your opinion can change given the time of day, the weather or the performance of the Green Line. That’s part of what makes him so compelling, or so maddening, depending on your point of view.
The numbers-crunchers love the guy. He was rated the fifth-best point guard in the league on John Hollinger’s projection scale, and Wages of Wins author David Berri has been singing his praises since his rookie season.
The people whose job it is to watch and subjectively rate basketball players can see the manifestations of those esoteric numbers like PER and Win Shares on the court, but the varying levels of consistency (ahem, jump shot) give them pause.
Not surprisingly, Rondo is a favorite of Free Darko, communal home of hard-to-define oddball players everywhere, and also not surprisingly, self-described traditionalists are often put off by his strange game.
Monday’s deal indicates that the Celtics have made their decision. While they remain focused on the Big Three nexus for the immediate future, the front office has also sent a message that Rondo (and to a lesser extent, Kendrick Perkins) will set the future tone for the Celtics. This will be his team someday. How he is able to balance the present and the future will go a long way toward determining how it all works out.
There has been a lot of talk about maturity lately as it relates to the Celtics, and specifically to Rondo and Glen Davis. Those are two separate conversations. While Davis showed poor judgment, Rondo has never put himself in that kind of position. Instead, the questions about Rondo are about how he carries himself within the confines of his team.
Much has been made about an Adrian Wojnarowski piece for Yahoo! that cast Rondo’s desire to hold a team meeting after a blowout loss to the Cavs last season as a poor decision.
There are two ways to look at that. One is that he overstepped his bounds and got burned when the meeting degenerated into a young player vs. veteran standoff, according to Wojnarowski’s story.
The other is that while Rondo clearly misread the temperature in the locker room, he at least attempted to do something that he thought would be positive. If anything, Rondo may be guilty of trying too hard to become the leader everyone would like him to be, while sometimes forgetting that the job demands 24/7 attention to detail. If that’s maturity, then Rondo still has a few things to learn, as do most 23-year-olds.
In the short-term, nothing much changes for Rondo and the Celtics, as both he and Doc Rivers said Monday afternoon at Waltham.
“I just look at him as a player,” Rivers told reporters. “I’m not going to look at him today any differently than I did yesterday. When he screws up, I’m still going to yell at him. I can fine him more. I guess that’s the good news of the contract. Our motto here is, we’re going to coach you the way you should be someday, not the way you are today. That goes for everyone.”
At this early stage of the season, the Celtics look far and away like the best team in the league, and Rondo has been masterful at the controls ,with 47 assists and only 10 turnovers. He has been content to set the stage for others and didn’t get drawn into an in-game confrontation with Chris Paul on Sunday. (He saved whatever he had to say for after the game, so again, was that a sign of maturity or one of immaturity?)
Teams have already sagged way off him with a larger player and forced him to take jump shots, but at this point the Celtics have been so good that it’s hardly mattered. Rondo will see that defense time and again this season and especially in the playoffs. It remains to be seen if his jumper is up to the task, but visually at least, it does look smoother and more confident, albeit in a very small sample size.
The on-court challenges will come for Rondo as the season progresses and how he responds may dictate (along with health) if the Celtics are going to be able to win another championship. Yes, he is that important in the present day.
But we also know now that Rondo is a key piece, maybe the key piece, of the Celtics’ future. Judging by what we’ve seen so far in his career, including his agreed-upon contract extension, that makes all the sense in the world.
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