There’s been nothing on the record since Rajon Rondo’s on-court spat with Rick Carlisle and subsequent one-game suspension that directly suggests the former All-Star won’t re-sign with the Dallas Mavericks this summer. It goes without saying, however, that tension like this makes that possibility seem more likely than ever.
Before his short-handed squad fell to the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday night, Carlisle addressed his relationship with Rondo. And though the 2002 Coach of the Year stressed his new point guard’s important to the Mavericks’ immediate future, he barely eased growing concerns that the late December trade for Rondo will amount to nothing more than a short-term rental.
Here’s Carlisle via Tim MacMahon of ESPN Dallas. Emphasis in the final paragraph is ours:
“I need to say this very clearly: He is an extremely important part of our team,” Carlisle said. “Our efforts to get to the highest possible level largely hinge on him playing and playing well with him. He needs to play well with us, and we need to play well with him. It’s a two-way street.
“The incident last night was born in large part out of poor communication between him and I. That’s on both of us. We had a long talk about the situation today, and we both agreed that we need to communicate more frequently.
“We need to work on the solution for making his stint as a Dallas Maverick the most successful one possible. We’re looking at 23 games here. Right now, this is a critical time for us.”
Stint?
It bears mentioning that Carlisle wasn’t reading a prepared statement – these remarks were off-the-cuff during a typically casual Q&A. He wasn’t parsing words, basically. But given the public’s interest in Rondo’s impending free agency coupled with the argument and suspension, shouldn’t Carlisle have been doing just that? Even going out of his way to lay rest to so much conjecture gleaned from the difficulty of Rondo’s first months with the Mavericks?
And make no mistake – whispers of the former Boston Celtic leaving Dallas in July are growing louder by the day. MacMahon writes that “Rondo’s run with the Mavs is extremely unlikely to extend past this season,” and his iffy overall impact on the team certainly supported that line of thinking – even before the stress of his playing transition boiled over on Tuesday night.
Of the reasons why we were comparatively low on the Rondo trade from Dallas’ perspective is what his presence would do to Carlisle’s former league-leading offense. Though he’s a basketball savant and passing wizard, glaring and long-standing flaws of the 29 year-old’s game have superseded those strengths of late.
Rondo can’t shoot and is afraid to get fouled. Smart defenses play him accordingly, going under even low ball-screens and paying him no mind as a weak-side spot-up threat, cramping the Mavs’ space to operate elsewhere. It’s no wonder their scorching pre-trade offensive rating of 113.6 has crashed to 104.1 in the interim. And while Rondo’s natural defensive and rebounding ability have helped shore up two of Dallas’ biggest weaknesses, that improvement hasn’t been enough to offset such deterioration on the other end.
Mark Cuban and company took a relative risk just before Christmas, betting that the addition of a singular talent would trump any stylistic concerns related to it. 33 games later, that wager seems increasingly like one they’ll lose – not only for the remainder of 2014-2015, but also seasons to come.
[ESPN]
