Los Angeles Lakers: Are the Clippers really a threat to sign Rajon Rondo?

The Los Angeles Lakers have some tough decisions to make after winning the championship. The LA Clippers’ alleged interest in Rajon Rondo complicates that.

The Los Angeles Lakers came out of the NBA bubble as champions, besting the scrappy Miami Heat in six games. While LeBron James and Anthony Davis carried the day, their role players came up big over and over throughout the playoffs.

Among this supporting cast, guys like Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Alex Caruso all had vital moments, but perhaps nobody was more reliable (especially in Game 6 of the Finals) than Rajon Rondo en route to the second championship of his career. Rondo scored 19 points on 8-of-11 shooting from the floor and 3-of-4 from 3-point range, adding four rebounds, four assists and a steal in that game.

He didn’t shoot especially well in the Finals with splits of .388/.333/.875, but his averages of 8.7 points, 5.5 assists, 5.2 rebounds and 1.0 assists were hugely beneficial against the Heat. The Lakers had a net rating of +5.8 when he was on the floor in the playoffs and +6.2 when he was on the floor in the Finals.

Rondo was a difference-maker, and he will wisely decline his 2020-21 player option which is worth just $2.7 million, only 20 percent more than the veteran minimum. He will definitely be able to make more on the open market, whether it be with the Lakers or with another team via free agency when the offseason begins.

As it happens, the nightmare scenario for the Lakers is the one which has reared its head in the last couple of days: The LA Clippers have interest in Rondo’s services.

Considering how well Rondo played all season, it would be bad enough for the Los Angeles Lakers to lose him at all, but to lose him to their cross-town intra-arena rival could be a disaster. While he’s been rumored to be on the tail end of the useful portion of his career for years (and years), he has the capacity to be a massively plus-level player when it really matters, and the Lakers and Clippers expect to have plenty of games against each other that matter over the next couple of years.

According to ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, Clippers star Kawhi Leonard has expressed a desire for a point guard:

"They clearly need a point guard. Everybody knows it, and Kawhi Leonard privately has clamored for one. It’s not that he wants them to get rid of Patrick Beverley. But Patrick Beverley is basically a defensive ace who’s small and has to play opposing guards. So, they need a point guard that can run a team and can shoot. Patrick Beverley is that defensive energizer bunny that comes off the bench to do it for you."

In spite of Rondo’s playoff renaissance, Smith’s description of what Leonard desires doesn’t exactly describe him. He shot 41.8 percent from the floor and 32.8 percent from 3-point range last season, and while he’s a capable passer he has a tendency to slow an offense to a crawl while assist-hunting.

So do the Clippers want Rondo so he can basically play the Patrick Beverley role described above, or do they want the information out in the mix that they’re on the hunt for him just to screw with the Lakers? As good as Rondo has been, he’s simply not the guy Kawhi Leonard wants for that job, or at least he shouldn’t be (and if he is, that’s a Kawhi problem).

We’ll see what the Clippers’ plan really is when free agency begins, whether that’s late November or early December.