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We've been waiting for a couple years now for Rondo to take ownership of this team, which to be fair, is a pretty tall task with 3 Hall of Fame teammates with very strong personalities. Still, we saw a seismic shift occur this summer with Ray Allen leaving town. A new page is being turned and the writing is on the wall. Rondo is the man now.
To further develop that title, Rondo put out the Bat Signal this summer, calling all his teammates out to meet and workout together.
via Jackie MacMullan (always a must read)
"Rondo has been great, just terrific this summer," Rivers said. "He reached out to all the players and got every single one of them to fly to L.A. and practice together. They put in about four or five hours a day. Paul and KG were already out there, but Rondo got Jason and Courtney Lee and all the other guys on board too.
"He called and asked me what I thought of the idea. I loved it, especially because it was him that organized it."
The spirited practices at UCLA were useful not only because of all the new faces. They gave the players a chance to spend some time together away from Boston and reestablish some camaraderie.
One cool part of this was the logistics. As usual, Rondo figured out the best way to get everyone involved. In this case, he knew that KG and Pierce were out in LA already, so logistically he brought the game to them. Oh, and he was sure to run it by Coach first as well. So everyone's on the same page. Flawlessly executed (as far as I can tell from this vantage point). Another step forward as the leader of this team.