What if you could turn Rondo into something that would help us win the championship this year and set us up longer term as well?
While this is the ideal: to have Rondo traded for pieces to help us win now AND in the future. That would be an incredible coup by Ainge if he could do that. While I agree that it is possible to accomplish both objectives with a Rondo trade (Suns, Kings, Wiz,Jazz, Griz), it is unlikely and tremendously dificult to do.
I think that the more realistic question (and more easily attainable result) is "would we trade Rondo for something that makes us championsip contenders this year and next, and not so much after that?" OR "do we trade Rondo for pieces to set up our future"?.
Rondo,
the player, is not helping us to win this year (despite that some posters feel that he will by addition by subtraction, i.e. we play better without him than with him). His impact in the playoffs can't be underestimated.
So the question becomes "does Rondo, the trade asset, give us enough to get over the top this year and next to give us two good runs?"
If we are in WIN NOW mode, I think that the answer is obvious: trade Rondo NOW for less value perhaps than he could could garner down the road when proven healthy for a big like Gortat, Dalembert and pieces,, Milsap, Cousins, AlJeff, M. Gasol, Nene, Okafor, who could potentially push us over the top now.
I think that the second option of trading Rondo for assets that could help us in the future and not so much now is a non-starter, because a healed Rondo is better than those potential assets.
I don't think that as constituted, we can win this year without help (a big). The better the big, the better chance we have to win. Rondo gets us a far better big than someone we could get off the scrap heap.
Bass + our 1st this year, plus Melo could get us a Dalembert Otherwise, we have to give up one of our for gurads. I don't think that is prudent.