NBA Free Agency: Rajon Rondo’s Falling Star

What a difference three years can make. With NBA free agency virtually upon us, players and agents are gearing up for a busy couple of days. As the rumor mill reaches a fever pitch and bidding wars go nuclear, the annual philosophical debates surrounding borderline max players quietly echo throughout front offices with cash to burn.

While arguments regarding the length and breadth of impending contract offers take on a new layer of complexity with the looming salary cap explosion, there are always a few players who keep things simple by being so obviously worth the max that any discussion about their “worth” is rendered moot.

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As of July 1st, 2015, there isn’t much of a discussion to be had about whether or not Rajon Rondo is worth anything even remotely approaching a max salary. Yet, if Doc Brown plowed the DeLorean through your living room window this afternoon, dismissed your pleas to visit majestic ancient civilizations and instead offered a trip back to the halcyon days of 2012, you’d find a Rondo that was worth every penny of the max.

After being far and away the best player on a Boston Celtics team that was one win away from a third NBA Finals appearance in five years while posting impressive averages of 17.3 points per game and nearly 12 assists per game, Rondo, it seemed, was destined for a long career of All-Star caliber play just three years ago.

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While the numbers alone would have merited a credible discussion about Rondo’s worth as a max player, anyone watching Celtics games between 2010 and 2012 could see his obvious value outside of the box score. Elite defense, a voracious competitive spirit and a full compliment of the clichéd, yet aptly named “intangibles” were all present in spades. Oh, and the occasional one-handed touch pass to Mickael Pietrus in game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals doesn’t hurt either.

Regardless of the imminent decline of some his geriatric teammates, it seemed pretty safe to assume that Rondo, still in his mid-twenties, could be a centerpiece on a championship caliber team while raking in exorbitant piles of cash. Were it not for those fateful three letters detailing any athlete’s worst injury nightmare, those assumptions likely would have proven correct. Yet, even with his ACL tear, age and a game that didn’t seem overly reliant on athleticism seemed to favor an eventually triumphant return for the Celtics mercurial point guard.

While most people know the story about what has transpired in the intervening years since Rondo’s heyday, it’s truly remarkable how his injury seemingly condensed three seasons into one, long melodrama. His 2012-13 season was of course truncated by his injury, his 2013-14 season was trimmed to just 30 games as he rehabbed and made his uneven return to the court, and of course, this past season was marred by more uneven play, a trade to Dallas, and mounting concerns about his character and ability to coexist with coaches and teammates.

At each point of his return from injury, there always seemed to be genuinely fair qualifications to justify Rondo’s dip in productivity. Two seasons ago? Everyone be patient, the guy is coming off a major knee injury, he needs time to get his legs under him. Last year? Well, it’s his first full year back after a summer spent training instead of recovering from knee surgery, let’s just see how he acclimates.

Yet even as qualifiers about his play lost their medical legitimacy, Rondo’s uneven play continued. He struggled to lead a young Boston team and seemed uninterested in fitting in with a veteran-laden Dallas Mavericks squad while averaging a pedestrian 9.3 points and 6.5 rebounds.

Even before his Dallas tenure went completely off the rails with his egregious eight-second violation and eventual benching in the Mavericks first-round playoff series, it seemed Rondo’s value had reached its nadir. Making matters worse is the fact that the league has seemingly evolved away from a player of Rondo’s particular set of skills, as there just doesn’t seem to be an overly vibrant market for point guards who need the ball in their hands to be at their most effective, yet can’t shoot threes or free throws.

Though, according to Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix, it seems Kings owner Vivek Ranadive is looking up from thumbing through his Mingus albums long enough to entertain the notion of bring Rondo to Sacramento (for presumably much less than a max contract), it’s pretty astounding to see just how far his stock has fallen.

During a summer in which gargantuan sums of money will be tossed around with reckless abandon as owners prepare for the salary cap spike, the fact that such a comparatively small amount of it will be thrown Rajon Rondo’s way is still difficult to fathom given his lofty status just three years ago. Even without a time machine, 2012 seems like it was only yesterday.

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