I dont get it....no one was confident at all just yesterday...rondo gets hurt and we have these confident peoople coming out of the woodwork because of Barbosa....weird really
Actually, from day 1 I've said that an injury to Rondo this particular year would not be the end of the world for this team. Don't see why Rondo actually getting injured should invalidate my earlier evaluations.
Well if that was your opinion from day 1, my apoligies to you, and I know you even thought we would win todays game going into it.... hasnt been many other optimistic fans thinking we have any shot at a title...until rondo was out for the year. Makes no sense. It didnt improve our chances.
I wouldn't go that far myself, but I think there's some areas that may see some improvement in our team, namely defensively if we increase Avery's and Lee's time on the court.
Also, for some reason or another, Rondo and Terry weren't playing well together, and to a much lesser extent Rondo and Lee. So, from a chemistry standpoint, we might see some improvement there.
I think Avery's game is the one that will be most affected, but we'll see.
Pierce and KG are not Rondo dependent to be productive. Green rarely played with Rondo, so that will mostly remain unchanged.
Bass? Well, he might not get as many open looks as he once did, but from day 1 I've also been of the opinion that Bass and Rondo don't mix well together because of Rondo's hard passes and Bass's butter hands, so we'll see... it's not like he's been hitting his shot anyways, plus last year he was more effective from the bench, which meant more time without Rondo on the floor.
In all, as long as this team keeps the ball movement, go heavy into the pick-and-roll game, are very active defensively while pushing the ball up the floor, we should be good. And let's face it, this team has done a better job pushing the ball without Rondo, though I think Rondo's last 2 games he was pacing us well.
Rondo had a very good playoffs last year, so that we'll be missed, hopefully we can get a collective contribution to make up for it.
But we won our championship in some aspects at the expense of Rondo, lest we forget that the key moments on that run were the insertion of House using Pierce as a PF to finish up the Cavs series, and on the Lakers' huge comeback. Rondo had some good game for us, particularly in the Atlanta series, and some games here and there in the finals, but he wasn't that much of a key contributor.
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