Paul is better than Rondo

[winsomme]

For Rondo to be able to replicate his Cavs performance against a team with a dominant inside defense, he'd have to become dramatically better with his midrange-out game as well as becoming a much better free throw shooter.  At which point he would become...Chris Paul.

yeah, which is why I think many are tantalized by the idea of adding CP to the Cs offense. and find it more likely that the Cs offense would improve with CP3...

[drza44]

Re: Rondo's Cleveland series.

In a way, I think that series has become fools gold for Celtics fans on the order of Perkins' ability to defend Dwight Howard.  The rationale for both instances is that since our young guy has accomplished this against a great player (or team), that means that our young guy will one day be able to do it against everyone.  That's not necessarily true.

Rondo against Cleveland (and Perkins against Howard) fit very well into their strength/weakness skill set.  Perkins has the size/strength to body up and defend against someone of similar size whose entire game is built on force...but he's weaker against guys much bigger (like Yao/Bogut, for example) or players that can go to the perimeter.  He's limited.  He's very good at what he does, and he's valuable for that, but he's not close to the best big-man defender in the NBA (which I sometimes see people saying, using his D on Howard as evidence).

Similarly, Rondo is quick and athletic enough to get into the paint/to the rim against any perimeter defender as long as the hand-check rules are being enforced.  We know this, and have known it for 2 full seasons now.  Cleveland had no one capable of defending the rim.  Therefore, Rondo was able to torch them repeatedly.  But on the flip side, if a team has dominant rim-defenders among their bigs then suddenly Rondo is human.  We saw that against the Magic in '09 and '10, and again against the Lakers in '10.

For Rondo to be able to replicate his Cavs performance against a team with a dominant inside defense, he'd have to become dramatically better with his midrange-out game as well as becoming a much better free throw shooter.  At which point he would become...Chris Paul.

One more reason why I think Rondo (right now) would torch MIA in a series. Who will guard him? Wade (and leave Ray open)? Lebron (and let Pierce roam free)?

Who will stop Rondo from getting to the rim against MIA? Bosh?

And this is why, I think, keeping Rondo on this team (and no further injuries), we'd beat CHI, MIA, ORL and LA next year.

Re: Rondo vs the Heat.  This is another topic, but I agree with you here and have been taking that same stance in debates.  The Heat have one Achilles heel (lack of interior defense), and the other 2 best teams in the NBA are built to exploit that.  The Lakers with their triple trees and the Celtics with Rondo and KG are both built to expose donut teams.  The Heat are over-talented elsewhere, which should make the series fun, but meetings between any 2 of those 3 teams in the postseason should be off the chain.

[BballTim]

Re: Rondo's Cleveland series.

In a way, I think that series has become fools gold for Celtics fans on the order of Perkins' ability to defend Dwight Howard.  The rationale for both instances is that since our young guy has accomplished this against a great player (or team), that means that our young guy will one day be able to do it against everyone.  That's not necessarily true.

Rondo against Cleveland (and Perkins against Howard) fit very well into their strength/weakness skill set.  Perkins has the size/strength to body up and defend against someone of similar size whose entire game is built on force...but he's weaker against guys much bigger (like Yao/Bogut, for example) or players that can go to the perimeter.  He's limited.  He's very good at what he does, and he's valuable for that, but he's not close to the best big-man defender in the NBA (which I sometimes see people saying, using his D on Howard as evidence).

Similarly, Rondo is quick and athletic enough to get into the paint/to the rim against any perimeter defender as long as the hand-check rules are being enforced.  We know this, and have known it for 2 full seasons now.  Cleveland had no one capable of defending the rim.  Therefore, Rondo was able to torch them repeatedly.  But on the flip side, if a team has dominant rim-defenders among their bigs then suddenly Rondo is human.  We saw that against the Magic in '09 and '10, and again against the Lakers in '10.

For Rondo to be able to replicate his Cavs performance against a team with a dominant inside defense, he'd have to become dramatically better with his midrange-out game as well as becoming a much better free throw shooter.  At which point he would become...Chris Paul.

  Every player has good and bad matchups. I'm sure you'll find that Chris Paul does better against some teams than others. But Rondo's ability to get to the paint wasn't quite as bad as you (and others) make it out to be. You can see this on his nba hotspots chart, but while he struggled against Orlando in the 2009 playoffs (he made 44% of his layups/close shots), he made 57% of them this year. He took about 7 of these shots a game both seasons. So he's clearly improving in this area.

  The 57% on 7 shots a game wasn't quite as impressive as the 61% on 9 shots a game vs the Cavs. But if you take out Rondo's shooting from the game he had to leave because of leg spasms his fg% on those shots against Orlando ould have been over 63%. He took a few more inside shots vs Cleveland, but I'd say that was because of Paul's offensive resurgence.

   So I'd say that, in terms of getting to the rim and hitting his shots, Rondo did come close to duplicate his Cavs performance against a team with a dominant inside defense. The difference in Rondo's scoring in the Cavs and Magic series wasn't his ability to get to the rim, or his success in finishing at the rim. It was the number of shots that he took (since he was trying to be a distributor, not just a scorer). It's also worth pointing out that he hit 13-31 shots that weren't close to the rim vs the Cavs but 9 of 36 against the Magic, so he was able to largely duplicate his success against a better interior defense in spite of shooting *worse* from the outside against that team.

[BballTim]

Re: Rondo's Cleveland series.

In a way, I think that series has become fools gold for Celtics fans on the order of Perkins' ability to defend Dwight Howard.  The rationale for both instances is that since our young guy has accomplished this against a great player (or team), that means that our young guy will one day be able to do it against everyone.  That's not necessarily true.

Rondo against Cleveland (and Perkins against Howard) fit very well into their strength/weakness skill set.  Perkins has the size/strength to body up and defend against someone of similar size whose entire game is built on force...but he's weaker against guys much bigger (like Yao/Bogut, for example) or players that can go to the perimeter.  He's limited.  He's very good at what he does, and he's valuable for that, but he's not close to the best big-man defender in the NBA (which I sometimes see people saying, using his D on Howard as evidence).

Similarly, Rondo is quick and athletic enough to get into the paint/to the rim against any perimeter defender as long as the hand-check rules are being enforced.  We know this, and have known it for 2 full seasons now.  Cleveland had no one capable of defending the rim.  Therefore, Rondo was able to torch them repeatedly.  But on the flip side, if a team has dominant rim-defenders among their bigs then suddenly Rondo is human.  We saw that against the Magic in '09 and '10, and again against the Lakers in '10.

For Rondo to be able to replicate his Cavs performance against a team with a dominant inside defense, he'd have to become dramatically better with his midrange-out game as well as becoming a much better free throw shooter.  At which point he would become...Chris Paul.

And which Rondo is progressing towards.

How so?

His free throw shooting and outside shooting have not improved in three years.

  Yet his ability to get to the rim and finish has greatly improved over that time frame, to the point where he's near the top of the league in that category for point guards.

[BballTim]

  Whatever. I guess if you get top decide what arguments people are allowed to make, it probably increases your chances of winning the argument. Other than that, I don't see your point.

No one is telling you what argument to make or not to make.  I am pointing out the flaw I see.


But if your only argument to my point is "I guess if you get top decide what arguments people are allowed to make, it probably increases your chances of winning the argument"; then your original argument must have been weak.

  You're pointing out the "flaw" you see in my argument, but that same "flaw" exists in about half the posts here. You're being totally arbitrary.

  Is it pointless to argue that Rondo will likely improve more than CP if we don't *know* that he will?

  Yes.

  Is it pointless to argue that the offense will be better with CP than it is with Rondo when we don't *know* it will be?

  No.

  Go figure.

I didn't argue that.


I said trade for the better player.

  Are you saying that when you quoted my post and said "No." you weren't responding to anything in my post?

You mean where I wrote

No.  If one player is better then the other, why wouldn't you want the other player?

Is Rondo going to be healthy over the next couple of years?  He takes more big hits then most guys his size.   

Again, we do not know.  Neither has had a recurring injury. 

I will agree that my late night English wasn't very good, but I did not mention "run the offense better"


I think it is fair to project who the team would want more based on which player is better.

  I'm willing to call this entire discussion a misunderstanding based on the fact that it was the middle of the night. I apologize for pursuing this.

[winsomme]

Re: Rondo's Cleveland series.

In a way, I think that series has become fools gold for Celtics fans on the order of Perkins' ability to defend Dwight Howard.  The rationale for both instances is that since our young guy has accomplished this against a great player (or team), that means that our young guy will one day be able to do it against everyone.  That's not necessarily true.

Rondo against Cleveland (and Perkins against Howard) fit very well into their strength/weakness skill set.  Perkins has the size/strength to body up and defend against someone of similar size whose entire game is built on force...but he's weaker against guys much bigger (like Yao/Bogut, for example) or players that can go to the perimeter.  He's limited.  He's very good at what he does, and he's valuable for that, but he's not close to the best big-man defender in the NBA (which I sometimes see people saying, using his D on Howard as evidence).

Similarly, Rondo is quick and athletic enough to get into the paint/to the rim against any perimeter defender as long as the hand-check rules are being enforced.  We know this, and have known it for 2 full seasons now.  Cleveland had no one capable of defending the rim.  Therefore, Rondo was able to torch them repeatedly.  But on the flip side, if a team has dominant rim-defenders among their bigs then suddenly Rondo is human.  We saw that against the Magic in '09 and '10, and again against the Lakers in '10.

For Rondo to be able to replicate his Cavs performance against a team with a dominant inside defense, he'd have to become dramatically better with his midrange-out game as well as becoming a much better free throw shooter.  At which point he would become...Chris Paul.

  Every player has good and bad matchups. I'm sure you'll find that Chris Paul does better against some teams than others. But Rondo's ability to get to the paint wasn't quite as bad as you (and others) make it out to be. You can see this on his nba hotspots chart, but while he struggled against Orlando in the 2009 playoffs (he made 44% of his layups/close shots), he made 57% of them this year. He took about 7 of these shots a game both seasons. So he's clearly improving in this area.

  The 57% on 7 shots a game wasn't quite as impressive as the 61% on 9 shots a game vs the Cavs. But if you take out Rondo's shooting from the game he had to leave because of leg spasms his fg% on those shots against Orlando ould have been over 63%. He took a few more inside shots vs Cleveland, but I'd say that was because of Paul's offensive resurgence.

   So I'd say that, in terms of getting to the rim and hitting his shots, Rondo did come close to duplicate his Cavs performance against a team with a dominant inside defense. The difference in Rondo's scoring in the Cavs and Magic series wasn't his ability to get to the rim, or his success in finishing at the rim. It was the number of shots that he took (since he was trying to be a distributor, not just a scorer). It's also worth pointing out that he hit 13-31 shots that weren't close to the rim vs the Cavs but 9 of 36 against the Magic, so he was able to largely duplicate his success against a better interior defense in spite of shooting *worse* from the outside against that team.

What about the Laker series?

And how much improvement do you expect in FT%?

[BballTim]

but I'm curious as to why you don't think RR played at that level in the Finals....I think it could speak to the likelihood of that kind of improvement actually happening for RR as a player...

  I don't really know. Maybe the leg/back issues that he had near the end of the Orlando series continued to bother him. Maybe playing 40+ minutes in 14 of the first 20 playoff games (44+ minutes in 8 of those games) took it's toll. Part of it may have been the defensive scheme, and part of it was Bynum and Gasol guarding the rim. He might have just cooled off a little bit. Then you have the PP/Rondo clash that we see from time ti time.

  But in general I don't see any reasons that prevent him from playing better than he did in the Finals. He's elevated his game in the playoffs and he's had some big games/made big plays in the Finals so it's not the case that he can't perform under the spotlight. He's had success against LA in the past, both in the regular season and in the playoffs. While people claim that it's a simple thing to neutralize Rondo by not guarding him, Cleveland (a better defensive team than LA) wasn't able to do this. Orlando (who had success in 2009 with that type of defense) wasn't able to beat us like that, and came very close to being swept by us.

[Mike-Dub]

Chris Paul definitely is better than Rondo right now, but like an early reply said that Rondo could eventually be better than Paul.

Paul is way way closer to his full capability than Rondo.

Like we always say if Rondo ever got a jump shot imagine how lethal he would be.  Then I would say he could be better than Paul, but that is a big IF.

[winsomme]

but I'm curious as to why you don't think RR played at that level in the Finals....I think it could speak to the likelihood of that kind of improvement actually happening for RR as a player...

  I don't really know. Maybe the leg/back issues that he had near the end of the Orlando series continued to bother him. Maybe playing 40+ minutes in 14 of the first 20 playoff games (44+ minutes in 8 of those games) took it's toll. Part of it may have been the defensive scheme, and part of it was Bynum and Gasol guarding the rim. He might have just cooled off a little bit. Then you have the PP/Rondo clash that we see from time ti time.

  But in general I don't see any reasons that prevent him from playing better than he did in the Finals. He's elevated his game in the playoffs and he's had some big games/made big plays in the Finals so it's not the case that he can't perform under the spotlight. He's had success against LA in the past, both in the regular season and in the playoffs. While people claim that it's a simple thing to neutralize Rondo by not guarding him, Cleveland (a better defensive team than LA) wasn't able to do this. Orlando (who had success in 2009 with that type of defense) wasn't able to beat us like that, and came very close to being swept by us.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying here, but my overall concern about Rondo's ceiling is that his problems in the LA series stem from his lack of a consistent jump shot (mid-range and out) and his FT shooting and I'm just not sure how much more those two elements will improve...in terms of consistency.

Rondo is still an all-star PG without those two elements, so I will not be disappointed with him at PG. but at the same time, like another poster pointed out, if you add consistent FT shooting and a jump shot to Rondo's game you have Chris Paul....so isn't it logical to feel that the offense would be better with Chris Paul?