And if Rondo played with the same defensive effort as Smart, the love for him in this forum would have been neverending, no matter how poorly he shot from the field.
Mike
His 4 years on all defense teams show the opposite to be the case. There was very little differentiation between the criticisms of his defense last year and the years he was first team all-defense. And there was no difference in the type or number of complaints about his shooting.
Agreed. Bill Russell's fg and ft% was horrid. If he had played in the Celtics Blog era people would have continually called for trading him.
Please explain how Rondo is on the same level as Bill Russell.
No. You explain it. Why should I explain something I didn't say?
I was being facetious.
Don't bring up stats of completely different players to defend Rondo. Try a similar player. Apples to apples.
It's apples to apples in terms of how Bill would be treated on this blog if he played today. Omg....look at his free throw percentage! Omg!
No... a poor man's Russell was Ben Wallace in his prime. He had a quantifiable impact on his team. Every time he stepped on the court, the defense was dramatically better. You can look at advanced stats that will show you that Ben Wallace was one of the 5 best players in the league the year the Pistons won the title with him. He made a major impact on the game. His skill set was crucial in producing wins.
Rondo is an interesting player. He's fun to watch. He's definitely a skilled player, but his skills (empty assists, point guard rebounding) are not necessarily priority NBA skills. He doesn't impact the game nearly as much as we wanted to believe. The advanced stats do not favor him in any way. There's some limited examples that back up the idea that he actually makes an offense worse. The over team success post-Rondo will be about even, imo.
Forget about Rondo vs Russell. Ben Wallace in his prime was a far more significant player than Rondo in his prime.
This is a great great example. Rondo is a lot like Ben Wallace in his prime. Now Rondo played at that level a lot longer, but people have been doing the whole "trade Rondo" thing since he joined the team. Not sure if Ben Wallace was treated like that in his prime, but Rondo was. So imagine Ben Wallace playing at his prime for a long time, and the entire time people saying "trade Wallace". Now give him an injury, and then return him to a very similar level, then trade him for a handful of beans. That's what happened here. And the ridiculousness of it makes me fairly confident that if Bill Russell played today (or if CB existed in the 50s) there would be "trade Russell" people, and some of them would absolutely overlap with the people happy with the handful of beans we got for Rondo (aka Wallace in his near prime).
When on Earth has good free throw percentage ever won a championship? When have you ever heard "oh man. That guy. He just has such good free throw percentage. He totally led his team to the championship and he did it at the line". Conversely, when have you heard people say "Oh man. That key player. He just can't hit free throws. His team lost the championship because that guy just can't hit free throws".
Has that ever happened? Did it happen to Shaq or Wilt or Barry or Russell or Wallace or Rondo?