FanPost

A lot of Good can come out of this!

The Celtics won a great and thrilling game yesterday without their star point guard Rajon Rondo. In fact, as everyone now knows he is lost for the season. The "experts" at ESPN have informed that Rondo is responsible for 40% of the Celtics scoring (Assists and Points). There in lies the problem. The other teams can key in on Rondo and break the Celtics down and put them in bad situations on offense which led to mistakes and teams running off mistakes. Rondo was not doing his job defensively either a lot of the time which led to further breakdowns. Rondo was not trusting his teammates which led to chemistry problems. But the ego stroker Doc Rivers kept running the old guard into the ground and the Celtics kept losing winnable games. Meanwhile Rondo, KG, and Pierce kept up their old bad habits and the losses mounted. Other players had trouble getting into their roles and underperformed. Result: The 2013 Celtics were failing NBA chemistry and were in danger of pulling the September 2011 - All of 2012 Boston Red Sox (and another career opportunity for Dan Shaugnessy to write a book with another fallen coach). I emphasize that I am not bashing Rondo because he has done great things in his career with the Celtics but as a role playing facilitator to KG, PP, and RA as well as getting the most out of Kendrick Perkins. But Ray Allen took less money to go play for arch rival Heat and apparently he and Rondo did not get along. My question to you fellow bloggers and Celtics fans is, was Rondo's on court (and maybe off court personality turning off the new comers (Lee, Jason Terry, and Barbosa all brought in to replace Ray Allen's production)? OK here is how I see the next few weeks playing out and February is a very critical month in determining not only this season but at least the next two seasons while we have KG's services. The rest of the players learn their roles and step up their games and more "miracle" wins happen against tough opponents like the Clippers next Sunday. Danny Ainge goes out and picks up a big man on the cheap (Kenyon Martin as a FA or someone like Marcin Gortat through a trade). He may or may not get a point guard depending on how well Jason Terry, Courtney Lee, Leondro Barbosa, and Avery Bradley do as the Point Guard by Committee. Jeff Green and Paul Pierce can be facilitators as well. We saw evidence yesterday of it working against Miami as they did get good looks against a tough Miami defense. If the Celtics continue to struggle, it will be because of systemic problems that already existed such as lack of size and athleticism to handle the younger faster and taller teams like Detriot, Milwaukee, Golden State, and New Orleans where Docs small ball approach will more often fail then not. Basketball engineer Danny Ainge has to figure that one out before the trading deadline due date. The unfortunate thing for Danny is that trading Rondo is off the table to acquire a major new piece like one of Utah's stable of bigs. Conversely, I think Brandon Bass and Jason Terry (Courtney Lee) could be traded to Phoenix for Marcin Gortat (reference: http://espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=badwr4z) throwing in draft picks as well. This opens up another roster spot for Danny to sign Kenyon Martin and Delonte West both of whom can help the Celtics for the playoff drive and then the playoff campaign. Basically, we could either see a textbook example of the Patrick Ewing thoery in work where the team gets stronger after losing their star player or the team falls apart and gets blown up through a Red Sox style fire sale and go into full blown rebuild mode. A new Celtics team is about to emerge and that cannot be a bad thing.

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