I know, I know, another Rondo thread. But I found this very interesting.
According to Forsberg's Twitter account, Rondo stated, "I haven’t played defense in a couple years… But here they expect me to play defense.”
Two things can be gathered from this.
First, as many posters have pointed out, Rondo's defensive effort seemed to dramatically drop off the last several years, especially this year. From the eye test, this looked very apparent. As soon as he was moved to Dallas, he looked much more aggressive defensively and seemed to put much more effort on the defensive side of the ball. With this coming straight from the horse's mouth, I think we can put to rest the debate on Rondo's defensive effort and motivation when he was here in Boston.
Second, this also seems to prove that there was some sort of disconnect with Stevens. Along with the Rondo quote, in Forsberg's tweet he also said Stevens is probably throwing his laptop against the wall right about now. With a coach who is as defense-oriented, or at least used to be, as Stevens, it's hard to see Rondo's nonchalance on that side of the ball flying. Furthermore, for Rondo to suggest that he hasn't played defense the last several years (IN HIS FIRST TRIP BACK TO BOSTON!) seems to be a slap to the face of Stevens, because it was in his system. I don't know. It just seems more and more that Danny ended up choosing Stevens over Rondo in a tumultuous relationship.
Thoughts?