Wingspan Wednesdays: Rondo out for season

Emergency virtual coffee date with Amulya Iyer to analyze the Rajon Rondo injury:

Ken: After I jinxed Rondo with this RIP 2012-13 Celtics post, I felt like we had to analyze the situation.


Amulya: 



Ken: Wow.. Although, I love that the lightest shades of red are in New England. 


What direction do the Celtics go in? I saw Jalen Rose tweet a half-baked trade: KG for Tiago Splitter/Steven Jackson. Wow. KG + TD. Arguably the two best power forwards of all-time, on the same team. 

Amulya: Honestly - I think the C's pull a 96-97 Spurs. Just tank the season, make a play for the #1 overall pick, and start giving the young guys a chance to play. In 2 years the team will have Rondo at full strength, and hopefully a young, exciting core to surround him with. Right now without Rondo they are basically the Atlanta Hawks - a mediocre team with nobody really exciting to watch. I'd much rather they be the Cavs or the Wizards next year - a team that loses a lot but is really fun to root for and exciting to watch.


K: As far as tanking goes, KG has a no trade clause and trading Pierce would be really hard to swallow. The rumor is no big moves, but isn't that what they said before Perk/Green? That's where this whole Celtics team started going bad. They should have fully committed to go for it and keep the Perk/KG/Pierce/Allen/Rondo core intact for one last run, or start rebuilding for the future right away and not resign KG/Allen et al. Also, Jeff Green 4 yrs at 36 million.. what?

A: Yeah - they were definitely trying to hedge their bets by trying to get younger but also stay competitive. I guess it didn't work.

Although they would have been screwed with this Rondo injury regardless of what the rest of their team looked like. ACL is tough. We'll see how Rose comes back from it, but except for Adrian Peterson everyone who comes back from ACL injury loses explosiveness, which means Rondo's entire career will look different. I wonder if he will even come back at 80% - quickness, agility is a huge part of his game.

K: He's a pretty cerebral guy, he could use this time to transform his game. Any chance he could just shoot free throws non-stop for the next 8-12 month? 

The downside is, I feel like he should be trying to play like D Rose, but this takes him in the opposite direction.. The upside to this injury is, we'll get to see what Courtney Lee/JET have to offer. The JET signing might have been the most overrated move of this offseason.

A: It was probably only overrated in Boston. I'm sure every other team knew this would be bad because he could only get 3 mil a year or something. Right?

K: We should've known it was a bad omen when he did this:



A: Is that seriously tattooed on the JET?? Wow. How is that not more well known? That's the worst omen I have ever seen. I'm surprised KG and Pierce haven't torn their ACL's yet. Wow.


K: Yeah, I like bold predictions... but that was crazy. 


A: How long do you think he waited to come up with that? Like even before he signed his contract he was like - I'm definitely getting this tattoo? Is that the second championship trophy he has tattooed?


K: Just spent the last ten minutes research JET's tattoo. He got the trophy tattooed before the 2010-11 season when they won it all, when he signed with Boston he added the celtics leprechaun. sidenote - here's Paul Pierce's tattoo:


A: HAHAHAHAHAH there should definitely be a follow up to your tattoo running diary of NBA players tattoos. There must be something interesting there.


That is a bit much Paul Pierce...


K: Just read this stat, this blew my mind. 



Celts are -1.5 with Rondo on the court and +0.8 without him. I'm sure there's an explanation for this: minutes, not playing against starters, whatever. But it has to count for something, right? KG is +4. For what it's worth: KD is +15, LeBron is +14, John Wall is +14, and Darko was -31.

This gives me hope.

There has to be something wrong with a point guard that shoots a career 24% from 3 and 62% from the line. 

Here's my game plan post Rondo:

Try to see if Barbosa/Terry can take over the role as primary ball handler. I just can't give up on JET, he has to be salvageable. He was the #3 6th man of the year last season and has scored 15+ points for 7 straight seasons. Plus I just have such great memories of him from the 2011 run.

My opinion of Jason Terry has changed in so many different directions.. we should stop.


Let's end with this:


See you on the other side,


from amulya & ken


taking requests for future blog posts. please comment or email.

No comments:

Post a Comment