[iggymcfly]

Originally Posted by spreedom

I love haralabob as much as anyone, but it seems to me like you're taking his opinion (which I will admit is deeply supported by the facts he presents) as gospel, when it is in fact one opinion, and one that he is mostly using to support his sports betting. I think the truth about Rondo, regarding whether he is a poor/lazy/disinterested defender or an elite game-changer on that end, lies somewhere in the middle.

I absolutely see and understand the concerns about his consistency and intensity on that end, especially since he really cut his teeth on those great Celtics teams of 5-7 years ago as a defender. Honestly, some nights he looks like he isn't engaged at all on either end of the ball, and his natural talents lead him to those effortless-but-still-underwhelming near-triple double stat lines.

Other nights, you can tell from the opening tip that he has an extra hop in his step and some fire in his belly. Those nights, he gets 11 rebounds and 19 assists, regardless of who he is playing with or against. My assumption is that he's a bit of a front-runner as a player. When he's on bad teams, he has a hard time getting up for all (or even some) of the 82 games on the schedule; when he's on good teams, his low-energy nights still look pretty damn good, and his good games are unique, dynamic and jaw-dropping.

My guess is the MBT, in trading for Rondo, sees Rondo the same way that I do. If he's surrounded by a contending team, he's going to be one of the 3-4 best PGs in the league. If he's not, you are going to see his effort fluctuate much more often. And honestly, with how small of a window that we seem to have with Dirk, I'm okay taking that risk, because this organization is clearly committed to winning, and I think most NBA players see that.

It's not just Haralabob. The other really damning thing for me is the Celtics on/off numbers the last 3 years. They've been better when he's on the bench 3 years in a row by an average of 3.5 points including one year when most of the nucleus was still around and they were still a playoff contender, and one year where he missed a lot of games so you can separate starter/bench performance from Rondo/non Rondo performance. That really says a lot to me, that he's either a poor defender, a cancer to floor spacing, or both. And I really hate the fit of taking an extremely inefficient player offensively who's also one of the most ball-dominant players in the entire league, and throwing him into a team where the offense was previously running at all-time levels.