Just How Bad Did Rondo Want Out?

bobheckler wrote: While Rondo’s decline at the age of 28 appeared a result of a player once reliant on slicing and scrapping his way into the restricted area still struggling to recover both physical and mentally from a serious knee injury, there have been rumblings in the fortnight since his trade that the regression might have been the result of another factor entirely: Effort.

“He’s always up to stuff when he’s locked in, and I think that’s the guy that Dallas is getting,” Grantland editor-in-chief Bill Simmons told writer Zach Lowe during their podcast last week. “In Boston, he would just give up the ball and just stand there, and I do think they had to trade him. It was too bad that was the way it worked out, not just from what we were seeing from the games, but from what I was hearing. In practice, when you have your guy who’s the unquestioned best guy on the team and the quote unquote ‘leader’ of the team, and he’s just not going hard in practice at all, that puts a coach who is trying to get through to young players in a really bad spot. And I think they knew they had to trade him.”

This is EXACTLY what I am talking about in the other Rondo thread.

the new TV money doesn't kick in until 2016.

some people seem to think it will effect the cap next season. but unless the CBA is adjusted it won't.

as for the article, I think anyone that watched the first third of this season, saw what the article stated.

enough said.

Rondo is gone, we WILL move on and be a better team.

Of course Rondo wanted out. You could just see him, every few games, summoning the extra desire and energy that resulted in a great game. He just didn't have the heart to sustain it.

Rondo (with the imprimatur of his coaches) succeeded in making this a Rondo-centric team. As the future hall-of-famers left, he became the only game in town, and his imprint on the team became too strong. When he found out that a Rondo-centric team was a losing team, his only recourse was to want out. Any remaining time with the Celtics would probably have resulted in even more sulking and probably more of a pissing contest with Brad.

I find it hard to believe that so many people attach such credibility to public remarks by players, executives, coaches, etc., when most of those remarks are carefully crafted to achieve specific goals by the speakers. They're speaking for effect, not straight from the shoulder, and the desired effect is very often to cast themselves in a favorable light. Rondo is a smart guy, and he obviously would have refrained from remarks that could have been construed as marking him as a malcontent.

He's in a much better place from his own perspective, with a second chance to carve out the sort of niche that can work better for him than Rondo-centricity.

Sam