Where do you rank Rondo?

[tarheelsxxiii]

Rondo needs to be ranked in a category by himself.

"good players who for various reasons have zero trade value"?

Not the title I would have picked.

Think Roy H. hit the nail on the head. He's a systems player... he can toggle between top 5 and top 15 depending on who he is playing with. As we know, he had ridiculous talents (I'd argue best in league in court vision and passing) and glaring holes (shooting, ball stopping - depending on system). No matter where he plays or how he is showcased, he is still an amazing talent. Think back to his playoff battle with Lebron, and let that be your benchmark. He did that himself.... and it was remarkable

[playdream]

At this point Rondo's value is ranked lower than KO's

[Kadin]

Rondo has clearly stopped caring. He is on the way out, and you can tell. He's not playing like a guy who wants to win. He's playing like a guy who has mentally checked out and ready to sign his next big contract with some other team.

[mmmmm]

I'm not sure that it's possible to intrinsically rank the PGs.  For instance, with Rondo I think it depends almost completely on what personnel he has surrounding him.  For teams that need a ball-dominant point guard, I think Rondo can rank as high as 4th or 5th in the NBA.  For teams that have other ball-handlers and who need shooting / scoring from the PG position, Rondo ranks much lower, maybe between 10th - 15th, or even lower.

I don't think any ball dominant player is good on a team or is something any team needs.  Ball dominant passers are rare compared to ball dominant scorers (Melo, Kobe) but how well are those teams doing.  I can't think of an example of a team that needs a ball dominant point guard who can't shoot.  The whole point is to get balance so that the star doesn't need to be ball dominant any more.

Almost every name being discussed on these lists is a "ball dominant PG", though.  Almost all of these guys possess the ball between 6 - 9 minutes per game.  That is, they actually physically have the ball in their hands that much.  That may not sound like much, but for a player playing 34 minutes, about half that - 17 minutes - will be on offense.  That means that most of these players are all controlling the ball from a third to a half of the time when on the floor on offense.

Here are just a few time of possession numbers for a bunch of the names being tossed around out here:

John Wall  8.6 minutes
Ty Lawson 7.8
Mike Conley  7.8
Deron Williams  7.5
Chris Paul   7.3
Damian Lillard  7.2
Darren Collison  7.2
Kyle Lowry  7.0
Tony Parker  6.6
True Holiday 6.5
Rajon Rondo  6.4
Russell Westbrook 6.3
Jeff Teague  6.1
Derrick Rose  5.9
Stephen Curry 5.3

There are other names sandwiched in among those, but that should give you a sense of the 'ball dominance' range for most of the names being tossed about in this thread.