6th seems about right to me. And depending how next year goes, I could see him drop to 7th or 8th... Lots of young point guards coming up and D-Will is due for a bounce-back season.
Also, I have a hard time believing Rondo will ever average 11+ assists again... not now that it's been pretty much proven the stats were inflated in an offensive system that didn't really work.
Not only has it not been proven that Rondo's stats were inflated, it hasn't been shown that the offensive system didn't work. Nash and Magic and Stockton each had 5-7 11+ assist seasons when they were older than Rondo so it probably isn't as unlikely as you think. And, for the record, those guys were playing in offensive systems that led to high assist totals for them.
I think the point of the comment was that since the Celtics offense hasn't suffered with him out, and that there's more ball-sharing, that the expectation is that Doc will take the ball out of his hands more often once he returns.
It's possible on the other hand that the Jazz offense was much better with Stockton handling the ball 100% of the time, than it would have been with more sharing.
The comment about "offensive system" is more a thought about Rondo's future role specifically with this team than about whether it's possible for Rondo to again average 11+ assists in the same system, or whether having someone else average 11+ is a good/bad thing.
There's something I've been struggling with. For years I was under this belief that your point guard shouldn't be a scorer, but should just be someone who gets a lot of assists. This just made sense with conventional basketball logic. WHat's interesting, though... is that you have to go all the way back to Isiah Thomas and the Bad Boy Pistons to find a team that won a championship with a point guard who averaged over 8 assists... and in that instance, Isiah was also the team's best offensive weapon. Are we really sure that this conventional wisdom is still relevant? What evidence do we have that a team needs a ball-dominating poor-offensive passer? This isn't football where you need a great passer to lead an offense. This is the NBA. In the NBA, big men and dominant scorers win championships. And at the moment, it actually seems like this league has evolved into a system where elite point-guard sized scorers (your IRvings, your Curry's, your Westbrooks, your ROse's, etc) are able to flourish due to rule changes. So it's possible for teams to exploit this by having elite scoring point guards. Right now... isn't the point guard skill of "passing" secondary to putting the ball in the hoop? It makes sense why ROndo is only 6th on that list... you'd take a scoring point guard with mediocre passing over a passing point guard with weak offensive skills. I'm starting to think that the idea of a "pure" point guard isn't really relevant anymore... in the same way that the definition of the center position has changed in today's NBA.
Wait, first the knock on Rondo was that he can't lead your team to a championship because past evidence has shown that PG's don't win you titles. Now the logic is, we don't need Rondo because scoring PG's are more important in the NBA right now.
And suddenly having a PG who can score but has mediocre point guard skills is better than one who has elite skills but can't score (which BTW, isn't true for Rondo). That's absurd.
It's also highly unlikely that a guy like Curry, Irving, or even Rose will lead their team to a title any faster than Rondo will.
So then the obvious consensus is that we are perfectly fine with a defensive roleplayer like Bradley slotted in as permanent starting point guard... and then cash in Rondo to the highest bidder. Bradley will slow down these elite scoring point guard pests... and there's no reason we need an elite passer. Our chips are best spent on more important attributes like scoring, rebounding and interior defense.
People talk about the "formula" for winning titles, but don't seem to realize that it pretty much starts and ends with individual performers. Whatever OKC's formula is has a chance of working with Durant, no formula that they could come up with would work on that team without him. Same for the Spurs with Duncan, who had different types of teams around him when the Spurs won. Acquiring players based on the "formula" without that superstar talent is like building a car without an engine. Building a team with the supporting cast for a superstar when you don't have a way of getting one quickly is just plain silly.
See now we are on the same page. KG was a superstar talent and that's why we won a title in 2008. Pierce in his prime was an elite scorer, but a notch below superstardom. Rondo is at most an allstar.
This is where you're clearly wrong. Rondo isn't at most an all-star. That's his floor. He's at most someone who can play like a superstar in the playoffs, dominate games (and series) and lead a team to deep playoff runs. You want to trade Rondo for a spin at the wheel that has a slight chance of netting a player better than Rondo and a much larger chance of adding a worse player. That's not smart.
You're right that we won in 2008 with KG as a superstar and Ray/PP as elite scorers. In 2010 that wasn't the case. Paul and Ray weren't the same level of scorers they were in 2008, that's why we couldn't close out the LA series. KG was hobbling around on 1 leg, nowhere near superstar level. Our best scorer was tied for 20th in playoff scoring, our best rebounder was tied for 20th in rebounds.
Rondo was arguably the best performer in the playoffs until he picked up a leg injury vs Orlando but there was little doubt (to me) we'd have won the title up to that point. Also look at last year. KG was playing very good but we didn't really have an elite scorer. We had an injured PP, generally poor play at the sg and pf positions and fairly dismal backups and still made it to game 7 of the ECF behind Rondo's great play. While we haven't won a title with Rondo he's shown that he can take teams that don't meet your formula on deep playoff runs. That's not the kind of player you throw away for a spin on the wheel.