Tue, Jan 6 G Rajon Rondo has been battling soreness in both elbows. He hits the floor a great deal because of his style of play, and a couple of crashes against the Lakers on Christmas Day finally got to him. "Usually when I hit the ground I'm bracing myself with my hands or something," Rondo said. "But it seemed like in the Laker game I went down on both elbows."
(Yahoo! Sports)
I'd noticed that since that game Rondo hasn't been playing quite as aggressively. Sort of like the beginning of the season, when the offense looked lethargic, since the Lakers loss our offense has been out of sync. Not making excuses, this team is too good to lose some of the games we've lost of late, but it really does seem to be true that as Rondo goes the team goes, when he isn't aggressive the other teams defenses can cheat off of him and aren't forced to rotate nearly as much, which is killing the amount of open shots we get. Which in turn has resulted in the sudden surge in PP's numbers, as he is by far our best option when it comes to creating his own shot. As we saw in the Jim O'Brien era, this need for Paul to carry the offense results in everyone else doing a lot more standing around and stagnates ball movement. All of this makes me think that us much as we need a back up big, a back up point is just as or more important. I've been against Marbs all along, but I'm starting to come around to the idea of late, unless a better playmaker can be had. If Rondo gets hurt having a short shooting guard in Eddie House running the offense is not going to be pretty.
The other thing I've noticed is Rondo actually taking some three's and jump shots a bit more of late which, though inconsistent, is a good thing in my view. He's 3-9 from 3pt the last 7 games after going 4-14 from 3pt in the first 29 games, not good numbers by any means, but at some point he's got to let them fly when he is wide open and he seems to haven taken a small step in that direction. Even if he can get into the high 30's in his three point percentage teams will have to start to respect him defensively a little more, which will really help the floor spacing which seems to have fallen apart of late. I'd like to see him taking at least 2 a game if the shots are there (and the shots are most definitely there), just to get comfortable with the shot.
