Rondo turns 26 today, and instead of celebrating his birthday by playing against best friend Kendrick Perkins and the Oklahoma City Thunder, he’s going to spend it watching a shorthanded Celtics team that has lost four straight (and six of seven) try to survive without him. In a shortened 66-game season that is already slipping away, the Celtics can’t afford to sacrifice games, or they’ll end up first-round sacrificial lambs for Miami or Chicago.
We’re past the point where you can simply ascribe Rondo’s petulance to youthful indiscretion. He’s in his sixth season in the league. He has played in two NBA Finals. He has been an All-Star. As he likes to point out, he’s the only one of his generational point guard peers with a ring. If you want to be considered The Man, you can’t behave like a temperamental teen.
For all the questions the Celtics have to answer in the second half of the season, the most pressing one facing Danny Ainge is whether Rondo should be regarded as a future building block or stumbling block?
The 10 games the Celtics have between the start of the second half and the March 15 trade deadline could go a long way to making that determination.
The assumption has been that when the Big Three era faded to black, the team would be turned over to Rondo and the Celtics would rebuild around their All-Star point guard. However, Rondo might be too unpredictable in his mood swings and too predictable in his play to be the Celtics’ centerpiece.
The same competitive fire that makes Rondo such a joy to watch can turn into a raging inferno that consumes him and leaves his teammates feeling burned and coaches fuming.
You wish Rondo would channel that competitive conflagration into free-throw shooting, a better jump shot or on-the-ball defense instead of self-immolating displays of defiance.
