Maybe the disconnect is that you expect the team to play better than it is later in the season and you expect Rondo to play better than he is during the playoffs but you still posed this question like where we are now is the best we can expect with Rondo on the team.
Improving over the course of the season is one thing.
Going from a decidedly average team in every phase of the game except rebounding, where they are well below average, to an elite unit, is another.
We seem to agree that it's reasonable to expect this team to improve. We clearly disagree about the room that there is for improvement.
No, we probably have a better (although not very cohesive) team tis year than many of the teams PP and KG had, but that still doesn't explain why you think that some of the worst play we've had on Rondo's team is the best we can expect from him. Do you generally think that the worst teams play with a given player leading them is the best they can do?
See above. It seems that we both agree that the team is drastically underperforming right now. We disagree about how much improvement we can expect moving forward.
I gather that you don't really blame Rondo for that at all, and I understand that. I don't blame him either, per se, but my point is that despite Rondo playing at a pretty high level, his play hasn't elevated the guys who are around him.
Yet the value of a floor general like Rondo (in the tradition of players like Stockton or Kidd), one would think, is that he makes the guys around him better.
Look, coming into this year I felt great about this team's chances. For the first time, it seemed that Danny was building the roster with Rondo in mind, surrounding him with guys who better fit his style. Yet if anything the team looks more disjointed than it ever has before.
From my perspective, the major selling point of building around a point guard like Rondo is that with a great passer captaining your ship the team can be much greater than the sum of its parts. So far, this team is doing a fantastic job of getting less out of more -- and that's the case even though Rondo is playing at a high level more consistently than ever before.