Do not trade Rondo.
You are crazy if you trade him. The roster we have right now is designed for Rondo to run.
We are moving away from the halfcourt skill set of the Big 3 era into a more uptempo style of offense.
Rondo can do both, but he can't not the afore mentioned with 3 aging (now 2) skilled players.
Trading Rondo now would be a huge mistake.
It depends if Rondo "changes" so to speak. Danny Ainge had a pretty good point at the beginning of the year; he said that a big problem with the team's stagnating offense was that the players completely depended on Rondo. That could be Doc's system, Rondo's presence or a little of both. He said when Jeff Green used to rip down rebounds for example, he'd immediately look for Rondo instead of pushing it up. He offered a suggestion: for Rondo to sprint up the floor when his forwards snatched the rebound, forcing the rebounder to push the ball up the floor and find Rondo in stride rather than have him race down the court and leave his teammates in the dust.
This is an easy suggestion and one that, at first glance, you would think Rondo would accept. As hard as it is to believe that a guy who passes all the time is selfish and cares too much about stats, that may be who Rondo is. That makes this style of play, which you claim was catered for Rondo and should therefore work, inoperable.
Most of the time, when one of our guys get a rebound, you can see Rondo running up the court while signaling for an outlet pass. Most of the time the transition failed to materialize it was due to the lack of an outlet pass, not because Rondo slowed the play down.
You can preach "don't always believe what you hear," but the fact of the matter is that Danny has admitted trying to cash in Rondo for other -- sometimes better pieces -- and I think he tried to this year as well. That says a lot regarding his belief that the system will work in real life.
The fact of the matter is that Danny discussed trading Rondo for Paul. Everything else is just rumor.
For your first disagreement, understand that you are disagreeing not just with me but with Danny Ainge. That doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong, but you're arguing with a guy (DA) who breathes Celtics 24/7, literally. I personally just plain disagree with your analysis. Your point that Rondo would sometimes be ahead of the outlet isn't exactly wrong, but the point is that because of the players' dependence on him, they would just stand around even if he was already halfway up the court. Either Danny sees something fans don't have the ability to see that makes such a conundrum the fault of Rondo, or it just means that the system and culture he put together this offseason is heavily flawed and therefore he wants to move Rondo for a different centerpiece. Overall though, even if your analysis is correct in that Rondo tried as hard as could to incorporate teammates in the running game, or more accurately that Jeff Green not engaging the fast break before heaving it up to Rondo is not the fault of Rondo, it still means that the system doesn't work. I have to think doing a complete overhaul of such a system without trading Rondo would waste a great many years of Rondo's career and value, and we'd be better suited to trade him for at least equal value of different sorts.
Lastly, your "it's only rumors" claim is just lame. Sure, there have been some bogus reports from guys like Sherrod and Broussard that don't make sense, but only so many can be leaked from credible guys like Ken Berger, Woj, etc. without at least a handful of them being true. Again, that doesn't mean Ainge is right about Rondo, but it does imply that he's trying to deal him and therefore makes the "who do you want?" discussion valid.