Los Angeles Lakers: Stay Away From Rajon Rondo In Free Agency

Over the years, we’ve traveled through the NBA’s glorious journey. It’s been thrilling to watch the league transform from the ungovernable interior play — led by aggressive frontcourts that sought to bully their opponents — to a breed of knockdown shooters. Having 80 percent of your starting lineup as reliable 3-point shooters, mixed with snipers off the bench, is the direction the NBA has embraced.

The league’s new fashion provides for record-breaking offenses, more variety in play-calling, and most of all … unstoppable point guards.

There’s very little a defense can do against Stephen Curry‘s range and screen-roll excellence with Golden State’s forwards. Go under the screen to prevent an open cut to the rim, and Curry will assassinate you. Go over top of the screen, and he’ll try to beat you to the rim with his rapid burst, making a play off the dribble that you didn’t foresee.

When Russell Westbrook is scurrying on the fastbreak and decides to pull up on a dime (with a mid-range jumper that’s tough to gauge), it’s normally bad news for the defense. When the Clippers’ offense hits a wall and DeAndre Jordan‘s free throws start killing them, Chris Paul is trusted with the ball in his hands. Not many point guards in history have been gifted with Paul’s mix of handles, ability to create space with a step-back, and mid-range jumper to finish the play.

It’s a process that aids a point guard when things die down, and majority of the league’s floor generals own the ability to create a long-range bomb if needed.

In the Western Conference, seven of the eight playoff teams would make you pay if you stepped away from their point guard, and dared him to shoot.

The one team jealous in that regard, would be the Dallas Mavericks. The one guy that’s been overwhelmed with the “changing of the point guard” movement is Rajon Rondo. Opposed to Paul or Curry, who can make defenses grieve by pulling up off the dribble, Rondo is not a shooting asset. He fits into a horrid category that general managers would like to avoid.

In fact, while there are many negative paths NBA franchises would like to avoid, two stand out in particular as the absolute worst:  Don’t be hung up in the 6-8 seeds of your conference for multiple years (staying at mediocrity), and don’t build a roster around a point guard that can’t shoot. 

If you lined up all the NBA’s starting point guards (without injuries), you’d find that 80-85 percent of them are able to shoot from long-distance. Or, majority of them are respectable enough where you can’t afford to give them two feet of space.

Even after having eight full offseasons to mold his shooting and improve his touch, Rondo has not fit into the NBA’s current evolution. He hasn’t been able to master a go-to jump-shot, and his lack of offensive firepower paints a great image for opposing defenses. A team may look at playing a Rondo-led offense as a “5-on-4” opportunity, because you don’t have to guard him staunchly from 18-feet extended. It makes it easier to cut off driving lanes, too, as defenses can take a step back and just patrol the paint. Daring Rondo to shoot has worked out well in the past, because you’d rather play the percentages than just overreact to one strong game where he shot the ball well.

It’s inconceivable to think that we’ve witnessed such huge change in the NBA game. Just in the past six or seven years, the “right” way to play the game has shifted. Without us even realizing it, the reliance on 3-pointers has made teams alter how they choose to play.

In the tables below, the teams with at least 30% of their field goal attempts coming from 3-point range are bolded:

And now, for this current season:

The difference is astronomical.

Not only are teams becoming more dependent on the long-range bomb, but it’s resulting in more championship contenders. In the 2007-08 season (I used that specific year because it was when Rondo won a title with Boston), there are a few bottom-feeders at the top of the ranks. Teams that you didn’t consider title contenders were jacking up a ton of triples.

Meanwhile, this season, the top seven in usage (chart above) are all considered championship contenders. Five of the top eight seeds in the Western Conference are included in that group, meaning it’s now a proven formula to reach the playoffs. It also indicates that you must have a roster full of 3-point specialists, and likely a point guard that can handle his share of long shots as well.

In that top seven from this season, six of them have starting point guards that can shoot the lights out from deep:

• Rockets: Patrick Beverley — 93 made 3-pointers at 35.5%
• Trail Blazers: Damian Lillard — 140 made 3-pointers at 34.1%
• Hawks: Jeff Teague — 55 made 3-pointers at 33.1%
• Cavaliers: Kyrie Irving — 118 made 3-pointers at 40.4%
• Clippers: Chris Paul — 93 made 3-pointers at 38.6%
• Warriors: Stephen Curry — 176 made 3-pointers at 40.6%
• Mavericks: Rajon Rondo — 13 made 3-pointers at 38.2%

It’s pretty revealing Rondo is the one that doesn’t fit, and the fact that Dallas has been able to sustain their same style of play with him playing almost 30 minutes a game. Sure, Rondo does have a gift for finding teammates in transition and making the extra pass, but he’s not fitting into the NBA’s analytics movement.

The Mavericks, which ranked eighth overall in ESPN’s Analytical Rankings of all sports franchises, actually set themselves back when they obtained Rondo via trade in December.

Before the trade occurred on Dec. 19, the Mavericks were 19-8, and blazing as the league’s best offense. Rick Carlisle had them competing in the West with an offensive rating of 113.6 points scored per 100 possessions. There were only three teams with an offensive rating over 110, and Dallas was one of them.

Since the trade, Dallas has went 15-9 with Rondo in the lineup, and 5-2 with him sitting (injury or suspension). That’s a total of 20-11 since the trade, which is still around the same mark they were in December.

However, they haven’t been the same team. The offense has regressed, as Dallas has recorded an offensive rating of 104.1 since the trade. That’s 9.5 points per 100 possessions worse, and they’ve ranked 11th in a category they used to manhandle.

From my perspective, the initial offensive sets aren’t even the main problems that arise. It’s more of the “extra” things Rondo is supposed to bring to the table as a point guard — getting to the foul line, scoring himself when teammates get stale, and not being turnover-happy.

Rondo has exemplified zero of those qualities this season.

For a leader that made great playoff runs in Boston by attacking the middle and tormenting Miami, Rondo doesn’t get to the free throw line now. He’s never really been prolific in that regard anyway, but this season is his worst. He’s setting a career-low for free throw attempts per game, with just 1.0. He’s finally drilled it inside his head that he shouldn’t look for fouls, since he only shoots 28 percent from free throws as a Maverick. Since joining the team, he’s 7-of-25 from the line, which is a joke for a starting point guard.

How can someone legitimately expect to be in the conversation of “top 10 point guards” when he can’t even create points from the easiest shot in basketball? There’s no excuse to have only made seven free throws in two months, while Irving (227), Curry (224), Conley (171), Rose (142), and Wall (204), etc. get to the line with regularity.

The game has transformed to one based around analytics and making personnel decisions based on them. 3-pointers and free throws are more important today than ever … and Rondo is absent in both areas.

As a team, the Mavericks have taken a dip in their overall free throw measure. Before trading for Rondo, Dallas’ free throw rate was .270. After obtaining Rondo, their free throw rate has dropped to .240, which is ranked 24th in the league. Only the Knicks, Celtics, Warriors, Blazers, Bucks, and Magic shoot less free throws than Dallas, relative to their total offense.

That just only begins to delineate how awful Rondo has been this season, when folks still claim he’s “elite.”

There isn’t enough proof to claim Rondo is worth a lucrative contract this summer, when he becomes a free agent. In fact, there’s overwhelming proof that says the opposite:

Based on how Rondo doesn’t satisfy teams that value new-age basketball and analytics, there is one team out there crazy and doltish enough to give Rondo a massive deal ….

How the Lakers Play a Role

The Los Angeles Lakers, with 16 gold banners hanging from their rafters, are still stuck in the prehistoric times of the sport. The front office isn’t too kind to changing their way of thinking, and they don’t fully believe in making roster moves based on what analytics say.

Through all the negative play Rondo has exhibited this season, there’s only two reasons Los Angeles will want him this July:  It’s a “marquee name,” and their superstar (Kobe Bryant) has made it public that he wants him on the team.

Remember, Jim Buss has developed a reputation in the last two years for giving Kobe everything he wants. Recently, Ken Burger of CBS Sports reported that the Lakers are Rondo’s number one option for this summer. Considering the fallout Rondo had with Rick Carlisle last week, there’s little room to claim he wants to return to Dallas.

The Lakers’ two reasons for wanting Rondo to join are pretty much the best examples of irony you could create.

First and foremost, Rondo being a “marquee name” is outdated, and quite frankly it has been since the 2012 playoffs. After Rondo nearly led the Celtics back to the NBA Finals with spectacular performances in the East Finals, he hasn’t been a significant part of a good team. He tore his ACL in January 2013, and only played 30 games during the 2013-14 campaign. He showed a few flashes of his old self in Boston this season, but hasn’t been the same name that shines in bright NBA lights.

In rudimentary terms, he hasn’t even been a top 15 point guard in today’s game. Those days have passed.

The other reason — Kobe’s request and persistence for Rondo — remains a weird situation. Bryant has one more year left on his contract, and it’s widely believed that he’ll retire once this deal expires. Buss and Mitch Kupchak would be insane to give Bryant another one or two years worth of high-dollar money when Kobe’s game has clearly dropped off since 2013. If it’s a one-year deal that doesn’t hurt their salary cap too much, that’s the only way I could see Kobe playing past 2016.

What does this mean?

Well … why would Lakers’ management give Rondo a five-year contract just because Bryant wants him there, when Bryant will only be there for one more year?  It doesn’t add up. It never will add up, unless Kobe decreases in age, or turns back into the 27.5 point-per-game scorer on 46 percent shooting.

The word “impossible” comes to mind for both of those unrealistic scenarios.

Thus, if the Lakers choose to sign Rondo this summer, I challenge Jim Buss to cite any other reason why Rondo should be “their guy.”

If it’s not one of the two reasons I listed above, then it just further goes to prove how stubborn the franchise is when it pertains to analytics. It will further prove that Buss has no smart ideas of how to improve the roster. He’s tried for two offseasons now, and both have been miserable.

Lakers’ head coach Bryon Scott, who seems to have a great blanket of job security is an old-fashioned character. In some ways, he’ll get along with Rondo.

One way being that Los Angeles attempts just 19.2 3-pointers per game (23rd overall), and only 22.3 percent of their attempts come from deep. Another way being that Los Angeles is a bottom-10 team in free throw shooting.

But, one way they wouldn’t get along is the obvious attitude difference. If Rondo thinks Carlisle is a tough coach to deal with, he has no idea how disciplined and forthright Scott has been throughout his career. Carlisle isn’t a coach that typically gets in scuffles with players, so it was clear that it took a lot of disruption by Rondo to aggravate him.

Rondo’s presumptuous attitude in regards to play-calling and leading the team would only clash with Scott.

It’s not the end of the world, as Rondo will find a new home in the summer. He’ll find a perfect fit, if a team has the right pieces and are willing to commit long-term to the 29-year-old.

The Lakers, on the other hand, have already wasted enough money since their last championship (2010).  Right when a free agent signing seems beneficial and exciting (Nash in 2012), it always comes back to bite them.

Don’t waste any more.