As far as I'm concerned, talk to me when the playoffs are over.
Until then, NOTHING, is proven.
I am extremely tired of the Rondo chatter myself, I think we would be better with him no doubt about it (in the playoffs b/c of half court play)....
with that said, you can not say we have to wait to the playoffs to judge whether we are better with/without him b/c THIS TEAM did not experience the playoffs with RR. Last year's team was almost completely different than this season's team! So, just because we made it to the ECF last season and may not this season, does not prove one way or the other if we are better or worse w/o RR (I happen to still believe we will win it all, as crazy as that may seem).
Not only is THIS TEAM different (with or without RR) from last season but most every team in the East is different! So, no matter how this season goes, you cannot compare whether we are better/worse with RR!
Now we can get an idea of regular season b/c we had half the games to see how we were with him and now half games to see without him. Even then it might be difficult b/c this team no matter the players of the past few seasons always played better during the second half of the season, so who knows how we would be with RR.
I can never understand why everyone who is a Celtics fan doesn't WANT the team this season to be better without RR, he is out for the season! While I think we are better with RR I WANT us to be better now that we don't have him, I want us to be good enough (I wanted that w/ or w/o him)! The only people I can understand who don't want us to be better w/o him is his fans (I mean people who are fans of his and by default are "Celtics fans")! Actually, I can't even really understand RR fans b/c when I was a Shaq fan I wanted any team he was on to win no matter what, when Shaq was injured I wanted the team to win just as much as I did when he played... because if the team won he won by default, of course I would love if he wasn't injured and it would mean more but I still wanted the win no matter how it came!! So, RR fans that want us to be worse w/o him and want us to lose just to prove that, you are CRAZY, even RR wants the team to win w/o him (if he truly cares about the guys like I think he does), sure he'd rather it was with him but since he's out I doubt he's wishing they lose b/c he isn't able to play!