I think people are just saying that Rondo doesn't have a sweet spot...relativity be [dang]ed?
all are entitled to thier opnion, but h does. he's gone so far as to mention it, and it got brought up in the finals. thats the reason he ends up in the top right corner, he thinks he has that shot.
He still shoots a bad percentage from thier but its higher overall than his overall atrocious percentage.
Thats all i was saying, people seem to have taken it as a "only good shooters have sweet or favroite spots on the floor!" statement, which it wasen't.
Finding these things out is relatively easy. NBA.com has a cumulative shooting chart (Hotspots) for each player which can also be broken down into different splits. Rondo didn't shoot lower than .375 from ANY spot on mid to long range 2 pt jumpers last regular season. He shot .462 from the right baseline on them and .488 from the left baseline. He also shot .464 from the right elbow, and .455 from above the key (the last two are particular interest to me as those are shots that he took off of the dribble). Those all are pretty good numbers on those shots. His problem area was actually on close range jumpers to the right and left of the hoop and on threes, of course.
To put that into perspective Baron Davis didn't hit for higher then 40% from any of those spots, and was in the very low 30s from a few places. Guys like Tony Parker and Andre Miller shot very well from one spot only, and were fairly bad on the rest of their mid range jumpers.
Now I'm sure a lot of you are saying "Well, he stank it up in the playoffs. Actually, not on his mid to long range 2pt jumpers, he actually significantly improved there. Rondo shot a collective .492 on mid to long range jumpers in the playoffs, with a high of .579 on left baseline jumpers (11 of 19). His shooting percentage was low,overall, because of his percentage closer to the basket, and I personally think that a lot of that had to do with the refs allowing other teams to be physical with him there (to foul him).
So the idea that Rondo was a terrible shooter in the regular or postseason, at least from midrange, is pretty much a myth. He should have taken a lot more, IMO.
To this point of the season he is 1 for 11 on those shots. I'm far less concerned with the percentage than with the attempts. That means that he has only attempted one per game on the average, and as we well know he has gone through plenty of games not taking any. With so few attempts, he could have a couple of good, aggressive games and see his overall percentage look very good again.
Rondo actually has a pretty good midrange shot.... when he actually looks to use it and is in rhythm. That he isn't is a big problem, IMO. Why isn't he? I really can't say definitively, though one thing which Doc SHOULD be saying to the kid is to take jumpers, off of picks, from the free throw line area from where he was quite good last season.
This reasoning works pretty well under two assumptions:
- there's no correlation between usage and efficiency
- opponent teams defend all players equally, disregarding their skillset
In this universe, it's correct to say that Rondo has a pretty good midrange shot. In fact, he's a better midrange shooter than Pierce - excluding finishes at the rim and 3pt shots, Rondo shot 44% and Pierce 42%.
Of course that in the real world Pierce or Davis would probably hit 70% of the midrange shots Rondo takes.
My counter points are
1. Whenever Rondo's usage has gone up (especially when Ray and K.G. missed time last season), his efficiency went up as well. That doesn't mean that he shot well in every game, just that he shot much better overall. Case in point, @ Minny last season. Remember Rondo hitting the game tying jumper in Bassy's face? He didn't hesitate, and he shot it off of the dribble. The key thing was that he was comfortable taking it because he had been shooting the ball more frequently and on his terms. The more the kid has the ball, the better he plays. Check out the game logs.
2. As I pointed out in my previous post, Rondo was hitting shots at roughly the same rate from spots on the floor that he was shooting off of the dribble. The Celtics would set up Rajon for jumpers on the baseline, the elbow and key shots were mostly off the pick or straight up penetration. Now why do teams give him that shot?
1. They are daring him to take it, and he hits it pretty well when he does and
2. It is a hell of lot better to let Rondo shot a jumper than let him get into the paint if you can help it. If our opponents looked to "take away" those shots, he would just blow past them to the rim or would hit the roll man. Those are there for him all day.
3 Davis?
The reason why teams give Rondo the open jump-shot is because he doesn't hit them at a high enough rate relatively to the other options on his team - and many times he doesn't even take them, what will lead to a more inneficient shot for someone else later on the clock or a turnover. For example, Ray Allen had a 52%eFG on his jump-shots last season, and many of them were heavily contested 3s. Anectodal evidence and such small samples don't have any relevance. Rondo is not such a good finisher either. Not nearly as good as Pierce and Davis, for example. But have you charted or treated statistically that data? The efficiency on ull-off jumpers, usage rate vs efficiency shots, etc.? The point is: make Rondo the 1st or 2nd scoring option on a team, like Pierce or Davis, and his shooting efficiency will decline abruptly. To compare his efficiency with those players is absolutely flawed, so saying that his jump-shot is pretty good is disingenuous. If we're going to be arbitrary, it makes much more sense to compare his shooting efficiency with the starting pg with a closer usage rate: Jameer Nelson (19% to Rondo's 18.9%). TS% - 51.5 to 56.4 ; eFG% - 49.6 to 52.2; eFG% on jump-shots - 42.2 to 48.0.
There is a reason why more picks aren't used with Rondo: teams will defend them going under and offering him the open shot. He won't take it most of the times, and in that case the only consequence will be to take seconds out of the shot clock; if he takes them, he doesn't hit them efficiently enough.
There are NBA players who make 80% of his uncontested shots (on in-game situations, in the gymn they easily make 100 out of 100). Obviously, nobody averages this through a season. And those shooters generally don't have the shooting mechanics that would allow them to optimize the efficiency when taking uncontested shots (because of the muscle memory they have a quicker release that they would need).
p.s. - just to clarify, what I'm disputing here is the qualification of Rondo's jump-shot as good, or even passable. It's extremely bad relatively to the standard of NBA guards. I agree that he should take more open shots that are given to him because most of the times he passes one he's disrupting the offensive flow and hurting the team overall efficiency.
There are players who easily make 100 out of 100 jumpshots in the gym? 80% in games? Where did you come up with that one, because I haven't heard or seen ANYTHING which would back that up.
Rondo's range does not extend out to the three point line. When you start bring things like eFG and TS% into the mix, it would be a good thing to remember that areas other than midrange jumpshots are being figured into the equation. A three is counted as 1.5 shots, and if a guy takes a lot of them and hits them at a fair rate it can really boost his eFG. That doesn't mean, in ANY way, that he is a better midrange shooter. Just that he has more range. Garnett, for example, is a much better midrange shooter than many of the guys out there who consistently jack up threes. That Kevin doesn't have that range doesn't make them better than him in that area. Is Rondo a "good shooter"? Not really, but he is going to get that shot whenever he wants because of the other things he does.
Another thing is that Rondo's speed makes going under the pick against him a lot easier said than done, just as has been the case with Parker for years. Rondo consistently gets into the paint when picks are set for him, and the times that he doesn't it really doesn't matter much. A pick and roll play, unlike a lot of the junk that Rivers likes to run, takes about 4 seconds to run. If it doesn't work, you can either 1. run it again, or 2 try something else. As I already pointed out, though, Rondo actually hits the shot off of the pick and roll at a fairly good rate. He is just extremely reluctant to shoot it. He is just as open the times that he does shoot it as when he doesn't. The defense isn't making the difference there, it is his mindset which is.
As for contesting his jumper, good luck there. Even now that Tony Parker is hitting his mid range jumper, opponents still give it to him. Why? Better to give up a two point shot a guy hits at 40% than one he hits at 60%.
With regards to Jameer Nelson. The guy is a better shooter than Rondo, but then again he is nowhere near the finisher or creator off of the dribble that Rajon is either (Rondo is shooting 20 points higher inside). Nelson had, as of 11/18, a grand total of 11 assists on shots near the basket. Rondo had 32. Rondo isn't just getting people three pointers and jumpers anymore (something he was criticized for last season,and can do just about whenever he wants to), he is setting up guys for point blank looks. Actually, with Dwight Howard for a teammate how does a point guard not get more? Rajon has probally dimed Perk that many times. Hell, Chris Paul only has 39 of those kinds of assists, and he has the ball about three times as much as Rondo does.
Why do I bring this stuff up? The pick and roll is the primary method of allowing a point guard to do his business. Despite the fact that Rondo is a reluctant jumpshooter, I think that he is very effective off of it and is the kind of playmaker who warrants its use.
Finally, I believe that many people look at the pick and roll in a limited way. The pick and roll isn't just about the ball handler and the pick setter. If you watch the Hornets, Raptors and Jazz (when Deron is healthy), three teams that run it a bunch, it is really the 3 other guys who get the most benefit. Take our last game against the Raptors. Rondo was taking the drive AND the shot away from Calderon, yet the guy still got 10 assists, and I doubt that he hit the roll man once. Why? The other three were in motion improving their position and he was finding them. The pick and roll forces the defense to react and adjust. In the case of Rondo, you'll see that when the defense will pull in towards the paint, and that opens Celtic jump shooters up.... especially if they move off of the ball. It is more of a distribution play, and it goes down quickly which is good.
Pay very close attention to pick and rolls run with Rondo in the next game. He can consistently get Paul, Ray and Kevin open looks off of it. Quite frankly he gets Kevin so wide open that I think that K.G. is uncomfortable taking the shot at times. He is used to someone being near him when he shoots.
Ok, let's clarify a thing: what I'm disputing here is the assertion that Rondo has a good jump-shot, nothing more, nothing else. Of course he's very good doing lot of other things: the fact that he manages to be the starting pg for a NBA team with such a bad jump-shot is the best testimony of that. So, with that in mind, we can go on.
I believe you are severely under-rating the importance of contesting shots. A couple of years ago I had the chance of looking at some stats regarding this issue (and others) from an European league team and I can assure I didn't take the 80% number out of nowhere. They categorize the level of contested shots in three levels - A, B,C - and there were a handful of players shooting above 80% in type A shots. One of them was former Duke sharp-shooter Trajan Langdon.
In the NBA, the only study I know is an analysis of the Sacramento Kings. You can read the article here:
http://www.82games.com/saccon.htmAs you can verify, Peja Stojakovic and Mo Evans made above 80% of their wide-open shots. Evans also made above 80% of his open shots and Peja 70%. The most telling part is the team - and the opponents - overall efficiency when controlled to the contestedness level: both the Kings and their opponents shot above 60% on open and wide-open shots and bellow 40% on contested shots (and bellow 30% on heavily contested shots). This is why contesting shots is the best barometer of a good defender, and blocks and steals are generally overrated. It's a stat that most ball clubs, even smaller ones here in Europe, track; as well as it is a must in any scouting report. As for hitting jump-shots in practice, I've seen plenty of times guys making an awful lot of consecutive shots and they are nowhere near the quality of NBA shooters. Anyway, the point is that Rondo's shooting efficiency stats are skewed and are misleading due to the kind of shots he has the luxury of taking (and not taking). To be honest, it's very easy to assess Rondo's jump-shot just by watching it: the form is bad, the mechanics are bad, the flight of the ball is bad, the range of the misses is bad... generally this is the picture of an inneficient jump-shooter.
I still don't understand the point or running more screen/rolls for Rondo. He's better shooting off the dribble, but he can do that without a pick, his opponent gives him so much space that he has time to put the ball on the floor and execute the shot. Are we going to run more plays to give shots to Rondo when he doesn't even take (or make) those that are available to him now? To make the defense collapse? Doesn't make sense, they don't even close out on him now. And why such a quick pg like Rondo needs a screen to get rid of his opponent? I mean, most of the times he doesn't even have an opponent. Rondo has plenty of touches that he simply passes when he should take the shot and you want the team to create more shots to him?
That confidence and mindset talk is crap. It's a very common excuse, we hear it a lot about Tony Allen, but confidence is part of the skill-set of a player. We just had a meeting in a ball-club here with the parents of the kids that play in our youth teams. They use the same reasoning and one spends the night listening to the same old crap "Johnny would be really good if he had more touches near the rim, he just lacks the confidence", "Timmy is not being used in the right way, he would make more shots if the Coach runs this and this", "Stevie was playing well, but the Coach took minutes from him and he lost his confidence", bla bla bla. We have to be diplomatic (we have these meetings because we prohibited parents of talking directly to coaches), but I wish I could say "well, once Johnny proves he can be a reliable 4th option on offense, I think Coach wouldn't have problems giving him a better role". It's not the Coach who has to give confidence to a player, it's the player that must earn that confidence. Rondo isn't making open jump-shots and lay-ups and Doc should increase his usage? No way, especially in a team with 3 of the greatest offensive players in the history of the game. If he has confidence problems, he should solve them. He simply isn't good enough to be a ball-dominant point-guard like, for instance, Chris Paul. I'm not even sure if Paul himself would be as dominant as he is if he was playing for the C's, let alone Rondo.
To increase his confidence in his jump-shot, he should work on it, it's that simple. He's never going to be a good jump-shoote but he can be better than he is. Ainge told that charitable lie, that Rondo was practicing in the gymn, taking 300 shots the day after winning the title, but I now think that was a message to Rondo.
