Boy, the debate rages. A couple of questions seem to remain unresolved and will likely remain so. To recap:
From a won-loss record standpoint, there is a fairly large sample of games with Rondo in and Rondo out. In these games, paradoxically, we did better in the games that Rondo did not play. (We also averaged more assists in the games that Rondo did not play). It is impossible to single out Rondo but if you compare it to say games KG did not play, where there is a big W-L impact, you have to conclude (at a minimum) that Rondo did not make those teams better by as much as many assume and you could even take the numbers and posit the extreme that Rondo made the teams worse.
That was then, this is now. On this team, I think Rondo will really be the best player and will impact w-l more but his flaws will still be exploited by the other teams.
good post that highlights a key question on rondo and the celtics' w/l. for the past few seasons rondo being on the floor did not result in the team having better record, which, as you point out, KG did.
we can speculate differently on the past, but we shouldn't ignore it. as for the future, let's raise a slightly different set of questions.
my questions begin with the realization that rondo has not recently elevated the celtics' w/l record. so, did rondo change his style of play in the past few years? if so, how and why?
is this season's team more suited to the current style of play of rondo? or will rondo need to change his style to suit the current team? again, if so how and why?
other good questions can and should be raised here, but i only wanted to get our discussion moving in a slightly different direction than "rondo sucks. discuss."
In 12-13, the Celtics were straight up inconsistent. A lot of people like to bring up the fact that the Celtics lost 6 in a row with Rondo and immediately won 6 in a row without him. That's ignoring the fact that the Celtics won 6 in a row
with Rondo right before they lost 6 in a row with him. So we won 6, lost 6, won 6. Two streaks with Rondo. One without. They were streaky as a team, and it's not fair to hold this season against Rondo. A large reason why the Celtics' offense struggled was because Doc did not adjust the offense properly. He needed to put more emphasis on 3PT shooting to make up for the lack of aggression the C's showed as they aged. Year by year, the Celtics FTr pretty much dropped as a whole but so did their 3PAr. This speaks volumes about a coach unwilling to adjust or a front office that didn't bring the proper pieces in. If your team isn't shooting 3s or drawing fouls, your offense is going to suck in today's NBA even with the best playmaker in the game.
I'd prefer the ball not stick to Rondo's hands for 15+ seconds, but that was always an exaggerated claim. The plays called by Doc for mid-range shots was the actual annoying thing. Way too much of it. An example of a team properly adjusting is the Spurs. As Duncan and Ginobili aged, Pop swung for the fences and turned the offense into a 3PT shooting machine. He did this because he recognized that his top players couldn't play as aggressively without suffering injuries. It allowed him to play his top guys less minutes and less aggressively and resulted in a much more fluid offense.
I don't know why anyone bothers to count 13-14. Recovery from an ACL injury is tough.
Anything before these two years, and Rondo generally had a positive impact on the Celtics. One off year and a ton of Rondo haters came out of the woodwork screaming "see, I told you he wasn't that good". I'm not speaking to you in this instance, Vermont Green, because I don't see you as one of those people.
To answer your question, hwangjini, Rondo did not change his style much if at all. Doc just had no idea how to adjust his offense for an aging roster. Like I said lowering your team's FTr and 3PAr is just a recipe for disaster offensively. Rondo had little to no control with this. Doc was never a stat guy.
Part of the reason the Celtics played worse without KG and about the same without Rondo in the last Doc season was because we were primarily a defensive team. Is it really worth talking about our offense going from mid 20s to low 20s in the rankings with and without Rondo? There's much more wrong with that offense than Rondo if we are in the bottom third regardless. It doesn't mean he has no impact. It probably means the offense was poorly designed more than anything, which I've always felt. A lot of people felt that way (remember peak-a-boo hate with Ray?).
For this season, the system fits Rondo better. Hell, it fits any player better. Stevens recognizes we don't have a lot of players who can iso and get to the line. Smart potentially can. Turner can. No one else really can consistently. If your team can't do that consistently, you need to turn to 3PT shooting for efficiency reasons. It doesn't mean you throw mid-range shooting out the window, but 3PT shooting needs a heavy emphasis, which we've seen in pre-season. Rondo's smart. He should be able to adjust to that kind of offense because it benefits him and the team more than ever before despite being less talented at the top.
The other thing rarely talked about is that Doc's de-emphasis on offensive rebounding really hurt the Celtics' ORTG a ton. Offensive rebounds are apart of the ORTG statistic, which is how teams are ranked offensively generally. I'm okay with the de-emphasis because we were an old team that needed to get back on defense quickly. I wish people would understand that, though, because the team's ORTG would be much higher if they were even average on the offensive boards. This is obviously not Rondo dependent.