Did Rondo's absence exposed Avery's flaws?

[Celtics4ever]

Ab does play better at SG, no doubt, he isn't a PG but sadly he is that height for the protypical PG.

[kgainez]

i'm not sure why we're suprised that a guy with wonky shoulders and expends TONS of energy on defense is going thru offensive woes.

is he a PG...god no. and his floor vision sucks. Doc's got to keep it simple for him. We don't need flashiness if he'll be handling the ball. Particularly his probing sucks.

I also know that I and others hate when AB misses layups but if that were LeBron or even when Rose was playing...they'd get a call for stuff like that. Rose was jus so out of control, you thought he had to have gotten fouled. AB is trying his hand at the same thing. Can't hate his aggressiveness.

[BballTim]

No championship team in the modern era has won with a backcourt that lacked at least one good to great scorer. Neither Rondo nor Bradley fits that profile right now.

  This isn't close to true. Start with the Celts teams from the 80s, the Rockets, the Spurs. I didn't check too many other teams.

It is. Notice that I said "good to great."

The Celtics teams had Tiny Archibald, DJ and Ainge. I will just assume you are not talking about Tiny. DJ was an All-Star and a Finals MVP who averaged 20ppg in the playoffs before arriving in Boston. Danny Ainge was a 20ppg scorer the year after he got traded away, and led the league in 3 pointers and was an All-Star in his last year with the C's. He was one of the best long-range shooters in the league for a five-year period.

The Spurs have had Parker and Ginobili, who are both far superior offensively to Rondo and Bradley. I think the 1998-1999 title team probably did lack a plus scorer in the backcourt, so you may be right there.

Houston had Cassell and Kenny Smith, both of whom were very good offensively. Smith was a very good outside shooter who was one of the most efficient shooters in the league during those title years - 4th in true shooting % in the league in 1994-95 and 8th in Ortg. Cassell was early in his career but proved to be a true offensive threat in the playoffs and hit several big shots.

  Sorry, I didn't realize that when you said "No championship team in the modern era has won with a backcourt that lacked at least one good to great scorer" you meant "No championship team in the modern era has won with a backcourt that lacked at least one player who was a good to great scorer at some point in their career, just not when their teams won the title".

  Tiny wasn't a good/great scorer when we won, neither was DJ. Danny only started on one of the title teams. Smith averaged just under 11 ppg in the playoffs in his title years, and Manu and Parker weren't on the first Spurs title team, whose best backcourt scorer was probably Avery Johnson. Rondo's clearly capable of 17 ppg in the playoffs, it's not that hard to find champions without better scorers than that in their backcourt.

Actually I was talking about those players in their championship years. I just mentioned Danny's and DJ's other years to illustrate that they could have scored a lot more if they weren't playing with Bird, McHale and Parish.

  Obviously Rondo would score more if he wasn't on the same team with PP/KG/RA just like those guys. He's certainly shown the ability to score when he sets his mind to it. It's true that you won't get a ton of points out of a Rondo/Bradley backcourt, but you'll get as many or more points than you got from many of the backcourts that I mentioned.

Starting in 1981 here is a list of every champion's primary backcourt scorer (or scorers if the best is ambiguous):

Archibald
Magic/Wilkes
Andrew Toney
DJ
Magic/Byron
DJ/Danny
Dumars/Isaiah
Jordan
Cassell/Smith
Avery Johnson
Kobe
Parker/Ginobili
Billups/Hamilton
Wade
Ray Allen
Jason Terry

This covers 33 different championship teams.

In how many of those backcourts would Rondo have been the best scorer? I count one clear "yes" (AJ), a few that might be debatable (the ones you picked out, though I'd disagree even there) and 27 clear "no."

  I agree the majority of those backcourts had better scorers than Rondo. I disagree that a player who scores the same or less than Rondo does playing on a team that scores 20 or so points more than Rondo's teams is clearly a better scorer. Your statement was clearly (even you agree) false, all we're debating is how false. Again, though, you're claiming people were better scorers because they scored more when playing on lesser teams. There's no reason to believe that the same wouldn't hold true for Rondo.