I'm wondering if the plan is to throw a huge offer at DeAndre Jordan next offseason. Seems like a defensive difference maker, and Rondo can turn Boston into lob city with Deandre.
Chris Paul isn't a good enough PG to turn LAC into lob city with Deandre?
Sure. The Clips are lob city with Jordan, who had more dunks last year than our entire team did. He led the league in dunks, and Blake was 4th. It's worth pointing out, though, that (from hoopdata) on Paul's first 2 years with the Clips he had fewer assists at the rim per game than Rondo, who was playing with an aged KG and Bass, not Blake and Jordan. So, yeah, lob city with Rondo.
This board has a tendency to grossly overestimate Rondo's ability to get the most out of other players. It seems like with every prospective big man, someone inevitably pulls out the "Rondo will massively help their game" card. It hasn't happened and it won't happen.
Big men who had the most efficient seasons of their careers with Rondo as pg include Wilcox, Shaq (they're first and 2nd in franchise history for single season fg%) and Krstic. Throw in Perk, who had his only double digit scoring season in 2010, finishing 2nd in the league in fg%.
Rondo is one of the finest passing PGs in the league but his assist rate isn't that much greater than everyone else in the league. He's about 2-3 assist better per game than a guy like Jameer Nelson or other decent (but not great) PGs.
Rondo's assist rate over the last 4-5 seasons is about 50% higher than Jameer's. Also, he's averaged almost 11 assists/game in that time, Nelson's been just over 6. The difference bout 4.4/game) is about twice what you think. For perspective, 4.4 rebounds a game is the difference between Howard or Love and Tristan Thompson or Josh Smith, or 4.4 baskets a game is the difference last year in scoring between LeBron and players like Nick Young or Afflalo.
He's not Magic Johnson averaging 16 assists per game.
He's not. But then Magic never averaged 16 assists/game. His high season is 13.1 compared to 11.7 for Rondo. Numbers-wise, they're probably much more similar than Rondo and Jameer. I should point out that this isn't a comparison between Rondo and Magic. But it's still worth noting that when Magic averaged 13 apg his team made about 47 baskets a game compared to the 35 baskets a game the Celts made when Rondo had 11.7 apg, so clearly Rondo was assisting more of his team's baskets than Magic was with that Lakers team.