There is clearly a correlation between the inability of the C'c to close out games that they build early leads in and Rondo's minutes. He is a very different player in the final quarter. He plays at a completely different speed and intensity. Yes he can play 48 min.; but not effectively.
Play Tony or Play Marquis Daniels - whatever happened to that experiment? Yes you could play Nate; but Tony should get minutes before Nate.
Prove it, because it isn't clear to many of us. Give us evidence that we close out games better when he plays less minutes. Cherry picking games won't be enough.
Usually I would require such a level of proof, but since you said "clearly", you need to back this up.
Agree with you. Rondo's 4th quarter issues are the same he's had all his career, and he used to play much less.
With that said, he has looked a bit tired at times... that's not to say that it's tiredness that has affected his play, but it's a factor in all. I don't know where the balance since he really should be playing a lot of minutes, and you would like him pressing full court the whole game, plus pushing the ball on offense.
In my opinion, it would be beneficial to find extra time to rest him. And this has been one of my main complaints about Doc, he doesn't seem to find ways to give players extra rest during the game, like real world minutes, while minimizing the amount of game time that passes.
If you want to maximize Rondo, he should find time to rest him before end of quarters, during time-outs, etc.
In all, Rondo is quite capable of handling the load, and he's performing and the consistency has been there. Still, I think there's room to maximize Rondo's energy. Even so, I'm not convinced that Rondo would play any different even if he had more energy.