Is Rajon Rondo a HoFer?

[Donoghus]

By the way, Basketball Reference has an interesting little Hall of Fame Probability Meter for active players, and Rondo currently sits at #26.  That sounds great, except look at some of the names in front of him - Billups, Arenas, McGrady, Stoudemire... and the player directly behind him is Joe Johnson.

I have little doubt that, if he remains healthy, he'll be jumping those 4 as well as a few other players on the Probablity Meter.

[BballTim]

If Rondo tried to pattern his game after Jason Kidd he would be a MUCH better player. Jason Kidd has turned himself into a deadly 3 point shooter to go along with his assist making and high IQ. He can also shoot the free throw well, and doesn't hold the ball for an eternity waiting for someone to come open for an assist. Please Rondo, pattern your game after Jason Kidd and you will be a much more enjoyable player to watch.

  It would be great if Rondo had Kidd's three point shooting and improved his free throw shooting but there's nothing wrong with the way he runs the offense. I prefer "leads teams on deep playoff runs" to "enjoyable to watch".

Playoff Rondo is quite enjoyable to watch because playoff Rondo doesn't hold the ball for 20 seconds waiting for someone to come open. Playoff Rondo also doesn't pass up open layups. It's too bad regular season Rondo doesn't think that way. We get 82 games of boring regular season Rondo with a few spectacular games sprinkled in here and there when he feels like showing up.

I love the "holds the ball for 20 seconds" comments that I consistently read on here.  If that happens, it's maybe once or twice a game at the end of quarters. 

  Such is life on celticsblog. You can point out that we don't take more shots late in the shot clock than other teams and even back it up with stats but all that gets you is accused of Rondo man love by posters who seem to derive the bulk of their basketball knowledge from comments they read on the internet.

[BballTim]

Re: More Assists with better teammates.

The guys over at Bullets Forever did some really interesting analysis at the end of last year. It started with an article called "John Wall's Missed Assist Tracker"

http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/2/27/2827243/john-wall-missed-assist-tracker-washington-wizards

And finished with, you guessed it, the "Rajon Rondo Missed Assist Tracker"
http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/3/2/2838291/rajon-rondo-missed-assist-tracker-john-wall

The takeaway from the comparison was that:

Rondo's Boston teammates convert 55.9 percent of his assist chances into actual assists, while Wall's Wizards convert only 43.9 percent of his chances.

That was for last year. It would be interesting to see how Rondo's assist chances this year compared.

  That's an awfully selective takeaway:

Celts non-Rondo assisted makes/opportunities: 935/2650 = 35.3%
Celts Rondo-assisted makes/opportunities: 231/413 = 55.9%
Difference: 20.6%.

Non-wall-assisted "opportunities" : 927/2672 = 34.7.
Wall-assisted: 251/572 = 43.9%.
Difference: 9.2%.

  It’s interesting that the Celtic’s non-Rondo assisted makes figure is 35.3%, only a little bit more than the Wizards non-Wall assisted make % of 34.7.


  The point wasn't that Rondo's teammates make a lot more of their shots than their opponents but that they converted about as many opportunities as other teams unless the shot came off of a pass from Rondo and then their scoring likelihood went way up.

[PhoSita]

Definitely needs more time.

I've seen statistical comparisons of Rondo (in the regular season and playoffs) to other point guards up to this point in their respective careers, and he's in pretty good company.

So I'd say he just needs to keep going and he'll have a good shot of getting in.

[fairweatherfan]

By the way, Basketball Reference has an interesting little Hall of Fame Probability Meter for active players, and Rondo currently sits at #26.  That sounds great, except look at some of the names in front of him - Billups, Arenas, McGrady, Stoudemire... and the player directly behind him is Joe Johnson.

That does sound great - Rondo is significantly younger than all those guys and already has a comparable resume.  That's pretty darn good, and lines up closely with the consensus that Rondo hasn't done enough yet, but is on a good pace to get there.

The only guy on that list who's at all close to Rondo's age is Stoudemire, and he'd probably be a pretty strong HOF contender if not for all the injuries.  Wouldn't shock me to see Billups sneak in some day either, though I don't think he deserves it.

[kozlodoev]

Re: More Assists with better teammates.

The guys over at Bullets Forever did some really interesting analysis at the end of last year. It started with an article called "John Wall's Missed Assist Tracker"

http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/2/27/2827243/john-wall-missed-assist-tracker-washington-wizards

And finished with, you guessed it, the "Rajon Rondo Missed Assist Tracker"
http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/3/2/2838291/rajon-rondo-missed-assist-tracker-john-wall

The takeaway from the comparison was that:

Rondo's Boston teammates convert 55.9 percent of his assist chances into actual assists, while Wall's Wizards convert only 43.9 percent of his chances.

That was for last year. It would be interesting to see how Rondo's assist chances this year compared.

This analysis patently ignores the most important part of passing, that is whether the passer actually gets people better shots (if he does, they'll shoot at higher percentages). So I'm curious how much different the shooting %s are for the same set of players off of Rondo's passes as opposed to other people's passes.

[BballTim]

Re: More Assists with better teammates.

The guys over at Bullets Forever did some really interesting analysis at the end of last year. It started with an article called "John Wall's Missed Assist Tracker"

http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/2/27/2827243/john-wall-missed-assist-tracker-washington-wizards

And finished with, you guessed it, the "Rajon Rondo Missed Assist Tracker"
http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/3/2/2838291/rajon-rondo-missed-assist-tracker-john-wall

The takeaway from the comparison was that:

Rondo's Boston teammates convert 55.9 percent of his assist chances into actual assists, while Wall's Wizards convert only 43.9 percent of his chances.

That was for last year. It would be interesting to see how Rondo's assist chances this year compared.

This analysis patently ignores the most important part of passing, that is whether the passer actually gets people better shots (if he does, they'll shoot at higher percentages). So I'm curious how much different the shooting %s are for the same set of players off of Rondo's passes as opposed to other people's passes.

  Not sure exactly what you're asking but the info provided is this:
________________________________________________

Total makes by Boston so far this year: 1166 Total Makes: 2564 Total turnovers: 500
Total non-Rondo assisted makes: 1166-231 = 935
Total non-Rondo assisted “opportunities” (attempts + turnovers): 3063 – 413 = 2650
Celts non-Rondo assisted makes/opportunities: 935/2650 = 35.3%
Celts Rondo-assisted makes/opportunities: 231/413 = 55.9%
Difference: 20.6%.
For Wall this number is 9.2%.

This is as close as I can get to the number Kev cites in the 82games article, where the league average is 8%. I would need to take “other assisted baskets” out of the “non-Rondo assisted” baskets to do that.
___________________________________________________

 
  So he's taking the conversion rate on chances that come from passes from Rondo (56%) and comparing it to the conversion rate for all other chances (35%). The difference is 21%, the average difference for assisted vs non-assisted is 8%. The numbers for Rondo aren't accurate but are probably fairly close.

  The main problem is that he's lumping all the turnovers in as scoring opportunities when this clearly isn't the case, but the error for this is probably 5% (ish). On the flip side, the 82games study was comparing assisted scoring opportunities to unassisted scoring opportunities. He isn't comparing Rondo-assisted scoring chances to our unassisted chances, he's comparing the Rondo-assisted chances to all other chances, but about half of the chances that aren't assisted by Rondo were assisted by someone else, which are still 8% (on average) more efficient than actual unassisted chances, so the non-Rondo chances are about 4% higher than unassisted chances would be. Make sense? (it's getting late, my post may not be that digestible).

  The end result would (and this might be pessimistic) have our boost in scoring efficiency from Rondo's passes to be more than double what you'd see from "average" passes.

[syfy9]

Re: More Assists with better teammates.

The guys over at Bullets Forever did some really interesting analysis at the end of last year. It started with an article called "John Wall's Missed Assist Tracker"

http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/2/27/2827243/john-wall-missed-assist-tracker-washington-wizards

And finished with, you guessed it, the "Rajon Rondo Missed Assist Tracker"
http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/3/2/2838291/rajon-rondo-missed-assist-tracker-john-wall

The takeaway from the comparison was that:

Rondo's Boston teammates convert 55.9 percent of his assist chances into actual assists, while Wall's Wizards convert only 43.9 percent of his chances.

That was for last year. It would be interesting to see how Rondo's assist chances this year compared.

This analysis patently ignores the most important part of passing, that is whether the passer actually gets people better shots (if he does, they'll shoot at higher percentages). So I'm curious how much different the shooting %s are for the same set of players off of Rondo's passes as opposed to other people's passes.

  Not sure exactly what you're asking but the info provided is this:
________________________________________________

Total makes by Boston so far this year: 1166 Total Makes: 2564 Total turnovers: 500
Total non-Rondo assisted makes: 1166-231 = 935
Total non-Rondo assisted “opportunities” (attempts + turnovers): 3063 – 413 = 2650
Celts non-Rondo assisted makes/opportunities: 935/2650 = 35.3%
Celts Rondo-assisted makes/opportunities: 231/413 = 55.9%
Difference: 20.6%.
For Wall this number is 9.2%.

This is as close as I can get to the number Kev cites in the 82games article, where the league average is 8%. I would need to take “other assisted baskets” out of the “non-Rondo assisted” baskets to do that.
___________________________________________________

 
  So he's taking the conversion rate on chances that come from passes from Rondo (56%) and comparing it to the conversion rate for all other chances (35%). The difference is 21%, the average difference for assisted vs non-assisted is 8%. The numbers for Rondo aren't accurate but are probably fairly close.

  The main problem is that he's lumping all the turnovers in as scoring opportunities when this clearly isn't the case, but the error for this is probably 5% (ish). On the flip side, the 82games study was comparing assisted scoring opportunities to unassisted scoring opportunities. He isn't comparing Rondo-assisted scoring chances to our unassisted chances, he's comparing the Rondo-assisted chances to all other chances, but about half of the chances that aren't assisted by Rondo were assisted by someone else, which are still 8% (on average) more efficient than actual unassisted chances, so the non-Rondo chances are about 4% higher than unassisted chances would be. Make sense? (it's getting late, my post may not be that digestible).

  The end result would (and this might be pessimistic) have our boost in scoring efficiency from Rondo's passes to be more than double what you'd see from "average" passes.

TP. Do you think you could show Chris Paul's as well?

[BballTim]

Re: More Assists with better teammates.

The guys over at Bullets Forever did some really interesting analysis at the end of last year. It started with an article called "John Wall's Missed Assist Tracker"

http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/2/27/2827243/john-wall-missed-assist-tracker-washington-wizards

And finished with, you guessed it, the "Rajon Rondo Missed Assist Tracker"
http://www.bulletsforever.com/2012/3/2/2838291/rajon-rondo-missed-assist-tracker-john-wall

The takeaway from the comparison was that:

Rondo's Boston teammates convert 55.9 percent of his assist chances into actual assists, while Wall's Wizards convert only 43.9 percent of his chances.

That was for last year. It would be interesting to see how Rondo's assist chances this year compared.

This analysis patently ignores the most important part of passing, that is whether the passer actually gets people better shots (if he does, they'll shoot at higher percentages). So I'm curious how much different the shooting %s are for the same set of players off of Rondo's passes as opposed to other people's passes.

  Not sure exactly what you're asking but the info provided is this:
________________________________________________

Total makes by Boston so far this year: 1166 Total Makes: 2564 Total turnovers: 500
Total non-Rondo assisted makes: 1166-231 = 935
Total non-Rondo assisted “opportunities” (attempts + turnovers): 3063 – 413 = 2650
Celts non-Rondo assisted makes/opportunities: 935/2650 = 35.3%
Celts Rondo-assisted makes/opportunities: 231/413 = 55.9%
Difference: 20.6%.
For Wall this number is 9.2%.

This is as close as I can get to the number Kev cites in the 82games article, where the league average is 8%. I would need to take “other assisted baskets” out of the “non-Rondo assisted” baskets to do that.
___________________________________________________

 
  So he's taking the conversion rate on chances that come from passes from Rondo (56%) and comparing it to the conversion rate for all other chances (35%). The difference is 21%, the average difference for assisted vs non-assisted is 8%. The numbers for Rondo aren't accurate but are probably fairly close.

  The main problem is that he's lumping all the turnovers in as scoring opportunities when this clearly isn't the case, but the error for this is probably 5% (ish). On the flip side, the 82games study was comparing assisted scoring opportunities to unassisted scoring opportunities. He isn't comparing Rondo-assisted scoring chances to our unassisted chances, he's comparing the Rondo-assisted chances to all other chances, but about half of the chances that aren't assisted by Rondo were assisted by someone else, which are still 8% (on average) more efficient than actual unassisted chances, so the non-Rondo chances are about 4% higher than unassisted chances would be. Make sense? (it's getting late, my post may not be that digestible).

  The end result would (and this might be pessimistic) have our boost in scoring efficiency from Rondo's passes to be more than double what you'd see from "average" passes.

TP. Do you think you could show Chris Paul's as well?

  I'm just pulling numbers from some studies done by people on another website. They compared Wall to Rondo because they were trying to prove that Wall's as good a passer as Rondo, his teammates just don't convert their shots. What they found was the opposite, that Rondo's teammates convert more of their shots because he's much better passer than Wall. (to be more precise, he's much better at getting his teammates good shots, which entails more than just passing). In any case, Wall and Rondo were the only two players who were compared.