The Rondo haters have gotten quiet.
He definitely has to be in the right situation. I don't think our team or Dallas was a good situation for him, but Karl is letting him run the offense to his strengths.
There was never Rondo haters... there were just people like me who loved him, but were adamant he was overrated by folks here who consistently wanted to compare him to superior players like Chris Paul. They key reasons:
- Incapable of playing without the ball, because he was a horrible shooter... so the ball had to be in his hands at all times to be successful. This inflated his stats
- Often played inflated minutes which inflated his stats
- Needed to be surrounded with players that had a specific skill set for him to be successful.
- Dogged it on defense
- There were three years of evidence that the team played better when he sat
- Likely could replace him with a better shooter/weaker passer and see improvements... which is why I wanted to trade him for Steph Curry back in 2012 when Steph was injury prone player averaging 14.7 points on 49%/46%/81% shooting in the shadow of Monta Ellis... and got buried for it, because "Steph Curry sucked on defense" and "Rajon Rondo is a better pure point guard"... I loved the idea of adding young Steph next to Ray Allen in the back-court. I didn't care about his lack of assists... I just figured you'd run the ball through Pierce/KG and spacing would improve.
Anyways, Rondo wasn't able to play in a pace-and-space offense. I predicted his demise in Dallas. There was no way that could work, because they weren't going to change their entire offense (which was #1 in the league at the time of the trade) to let Rondo control the ball 99% of the time... and Rondo was a liability when he didn't have the basketball in his hands. You can't have someone who destroys spacing be the point guard in a pace-and-space offense.
I said this offseason that he was still capable of generating big stats if a team was willing to give him the keys to offense. It wasn't likely to result in wins, but he'd get his boatloads of assists. Also, his per-minute stats last season in Boston were the highest of his career in terms of assists and rebounds... it wasn't like he lost the ability to play basketball. He just couldn't play on a modern offense.
So he's in Sac... his minutes are the highest they've been since 2012-13, he's had the keys to the offense, he's put up huge stats... and his team is 6-12. Makes sense. Maybe they'll get it together. Rondo will be remembered as a poor man's Jason Kidd. If he develops a consistent 3-point shot, he might eventually find a home contributing to a winner. To his credit, he's shot 36% from three this year.