Well for what it's worth, that seemed to be my take-away last season. Rondo and Green don't mix. Green needs the ball to be effective. He needs to drive inside and do his thing. In the Rondo-centric offense, Green basically just stood around. Part of the reason we played better last season without Rondo was because Green stepped up in Rondo's absence. It's not in the least bit surprising to me that Green's best games lately have come with Rondo sitting.
And btw... what's the grace period on Rondo's return? So far he's been crap. Do we not get to fairly judge him as a "star" until next season? Because as of right now, his trade value is plummeting.
Dude, how short-sighted could you be? He has played like 3 games, hasn't he?
I won't be able to sleep until I know what you propose we do with Rondo, given your impressions of him at this point. The entire roster as a whole, actually, if you'd like to elaborate beyond Rondo.
You know Rondo and Green played together last year, right?
Look... I get flack on this forum for "hating" Rondo. That's nonsense. We live in the age of hyperbole. If you don't think something is the greatest thing ever, you apparently must "hate it". I've said countless times here that Rondo is my favorite player on the Celtics. I just try to keep a level head and admittedly go overboard sometimes.
Gotta love hyperbole about hyperbole. It's not a matter of whether you think Rondo's the greatest thing ever, it's at least having an inkling of what he does well and how it affects the team. Case in point, a few weeks ago you were saying that claiming Rondo was responsible for Ray and Paul becoming more efficient scorers when Rondo took more control of the offense was no different that attributing LeBron's efficiency to Mario Chalmers. That's not you pointing out that Rondo "isn't the greatest thing ever", it's not having any idea why someone who gets his teammates open looks and makes well timed and well placed passes can have a positive effect on how well they score.
I'm a blatant pessimist. There are plenty of members on this forum (BBallTim and Celtics18, for example) who are blatant optimists. It's all in good fun. There's no ulterior motive here.
I'm more of a realist. I'm sure it seems like optimism to someone who posted many a time that Rondo's injury might have ended his career but that's not the case.
But anyways, reiterating what I said earlier in this thread... Rondo and Green didn't play well together last season. We were below .500 with Rondo running the show. Green's numbers were lacking. Green was tentative. He mostly stood around. Rondo's ball-dominating didn't mesh with Green at all. We all basically expected that those two would play great together... Green would run the floor with Rondo, get lots of fast breaks and alley oops. It never happened. Rondo didn't make Green look good.
Then suddenly Rondo gets injured and Green's game blows up. The apologists (the blatant optimists) claim this was because Green was finally healthy. The naysayers (the blatant pessimists like myself) say this is because Green and Rondo don't play well together.
One of the main problems with your point is that there were a ton of things that changed significantly over the course of the season last year but you only noticed one, Rondo's injury. You only talk in terms of "with and without Rondo" and "we were better without Rondo". Here are a few things you missed:
The defense was terrible with KG on the bench early last year but improved significantly over the course of the year.
PP and Jet were both struggling with injuries in Dec/Jan, especially January. In November they combined for 31 ppg and .590 TS%. After the all-star break they combined for 29 ppg on .590 TS%. In January they combined for 23 ppg on .500 TS%. That's a fairly big hit.
As you noticed, Jeff Green got off to a slow start last year, which was attributable to his coming back from injury.
Are these things that you never observed, or did you not think that they would have any effect on our won-loss record? If you noticed them and thought that they had a big effect on our record (they did) then don't you think "the team was better without Rondo" is disingenuous? Or are you claiming that Rondo was responsible for PP's playing worse when playing through an injury, or the defense the bigs played when KG was on the bench? Why would you think factoring those things in when considering what happened during the season makes someone an apologist?
As for Green in particular, take a look at his splits from last year when you get a chance. His TS% was around 50% in November and December, 59% in January and 59% after the all-star break. His ORtg averaged about 90 in Nov/Dec, 107 in January and 107 after the all-star break. FYI, Rondo played in January when Green's play was getting significantly better. It didn't happen when Rondo left the lineup, it was happening before then, you just never noticed.
What did happen when Rondo went out was Sully went out for the year so Green's minutes increased. *That's* what you noticed, and you're trying to claim that Green putting up bigger stats when he played more minutes to his not meshing with Rondo, and you're tailoring your analysis of Green's game on that claim. If you checked Green's synergy numbers in 2013 he was near the top of the league in spot up shooting and not that great in isolations, or pretty much the opposite of your takeaway from what happened.