It’s not totally accurate to say he’s getting Wally Pipp’d, but Rajon Rondo is not going to get handed the Los Angeles Lakers’ starting point guard job immediately upon returning from suspension. Despite starting the Los Angeles Lakers’ first two games of the year, Rondo has sat on the sideline for the last three contests after the league suspended him for throwing punches in an altercation with Chris Paul.
That suspension is up on Saturday evening against the San Antonio Spurs, meaning Rondo is good to play. But on the heels of the Lakers winning two games in a row starting Lonzo Ball at the point, Dave McMenamin of ESPN reports that Los Angeles has no plans of making any changes.
Rondo was named the Lakers’ starting point guard at the beginning of the season, with Luke Walton citing Ball’s recovery from offseason knee surgery as a major reason for the decision to go with the veteran. To Ball’s credit he’s performed well as Rondo was forced to the sideline, averaging 12.7 points, 6.7 assists, 6.3 rebounds, and 2.7 steals in 31.5 minutes per game. Most encouraging of all for the Lakers is how efficient Ball has been from the field over the last three games, hitting 53.6 percent of his attempts from the field and 40 percent of his threes.
It’s not an especially large sample size, of course, but if Ball is healthy and able to impact the game in as many way as his numbers indicate, it’s worth rolling with him at the point.
