It's not misleading. He was injured. Missed a lot of games. That was the POINT. Whether it was an ACL, or migrane, or had to have his head reattached doesn't matter. Are you arguing the number of games played or not? It appears you want to argue the reason, which I hadn't brought up and it didn't matter.
No, my argument is that he missed almost all of those games because of
one injury, not because of chronic re-injury. That's an important point to make if you're judging his ability to stay healthy in the future.
So wait, to you the players not voting him a share isn't the players not voting him a share? Am I missing something? Why do you keep taking things out of context?
I said the team benched him (they did) because of issues they had with him. I said the players didn't vote him a share. They didn't. So what, exactly, is your issue here?
Look, this is always going to be a problem for us because I look at the precise meanings of words to analyze their meanings and you seem so focused on hammering home the same point that you're not even reading what I'm writing.
Let me re-trace the steps for you. First you asked a rhetorical question:
And the PO team he was on shut him down rather than play him. His teammates voted him no shares of PO $$$. Doesn't that tell you something?
I understood that it was meant as a rhetorical question, but I disagree with the implication so I instead gave you my take on the situation:
Not really. He played in 2 games. The players were handed a list of who was going to get shares by the team and they didn't disagree with it. That's a lot different than a lockerroom of players actively voting to exclude somebody.
To paraphrase, no I don't think the simple fact that Rondo was denied a playoff share and the circumstances which led to that denial means anything regarding his ability to fit into a locker room and be a constructive presence there. He played in 2 out of 5 games. More like 1 out of 5 really, and he didn't miss the rest because of injury. That's a failing grade in pretty much every endeavor. Regardless if the players like him or not, there was sufficient cause to exclude him from the playoff shares.
Also, I have a general disdain for "soundbite" related overreactions in the form of "this happened, so what do you think" and the implication that there's only one right answer. It should be pretty obvious by now that I don't have a 5 or 6 word response to anything. And if you actually read more of the coverage on the Dallas/Rondo situation like this take from ESPN: (
link) I think it's pretty clear that the situation isn't as clear-cut as "Rondo is a cancer, coaches hate him, players hate him, end of discussion".
Carlisle made a pragmatic decision about what he thought was best for the team in their quest to win a playoff series. To him that meant removing the Rondo topic as a possible distraction and focusing on beating Houston without him. Who knows what was going through Rondo's head that day which prevented him from playing basketball. His poor performance in Game 2 wasn't the result of an injury or a communication issue with his coach, his head flat out wasn't in the game to begin with. There is a version of this story where Rondo is as unhappy with his own performance in that game as his team and coaches were. To believe that though I suppose you would first have to agree that Rondo is a person not a caricature, and it's possible for him to make a mistake and learn from it.
I could have written more in my initial response but at the time I was trying to be brief because this isn't the Rondo thread, there's already one in the Personnel Forum that I started. The whole "Rondo is a coach killer" storyline that grew out of that Game 2 incident smells fishy with me to begin with because there's already journalism out there which says the exact opposite (
link). And the news as reported gives no indication whatsoever that any animosity was involved in the decision to exclude Rondo from the playoff shares. You're the one making that assumption.
Evidently you didn't like my answer though because you responded with this:
And like it really makes a difference on the PO $$$ - the team benched him and blamed it on a non-existent back injury and his teammates didn't want him to get any PO shares. You can try to spin it any way you want, but the facts are the same. Player benched and teammates felt he didn't deserve anything. No thanks. The guy is a PITA diva and not worth the headache.
Actually, the coach benched him and told the media flat out it wasn't because of injury. He also told the media that Rondo was done forever as a Dallas Maverick as far as he was concerned. Then team management decided to exclude him from the playoff share list that they presented to the players and the players voted to approve the list they were given.
I'm stating the facts as I know them, if anything you're the one applying spin. Did the players actually
feel that he didn't deserve a share? We don't know that. Maybe some of them did, maybe even a majority did but nothing has been reported about that. Did Rondo himself feel that he deserved a share? We don't know that. Did the players ever take a vote on the issue of including Rondo in the playoff shares? We don't know that either. You're the one assigning probable motive to their actions.
Bottom line, there's a lot of things that could have happened in that locker room that we don't know about. Should I allow the fallout from two playoff games to negate the rest of Rondo's career to date? Personally I don't think that's a reasonable assessment of this situation. Are you actually going to read the articles I linked to? I doubt it. Are you open-minded enough to allow for the possibility that you, a person reading the internet with no connection to the players involved, might not have all of the relevant facts in this situation? I doubt it. Surely you must already be aware that you don't have first-hand experience enough to make that evaluation yet you seem pretty set on your opinion anyway. But in the event that you actually do care enough to look at this beyond the 5 or 6 word soundbite reaction, I posted the links anyway and gave you my opinion. Feel free to ignore if that's what you need to do.
For sure any team that takes an interview with Rondo this summer is going to first need to find a satisfactory answer for "what went wrong in Dallas, and how do we make sure that doesn't happen here". That bit of nagging doubt is going to push his price down and push some teams out of the running entirely. I understand that most people here don't think Rondo is worth the risk. As much as I liked Boston Rondo, I would be leaning that way too if not for DeMarcus' endorsement and Rudy's close friendship. Those factors make me think it could work -- if he's able to get healthy. If Cousins and Rondo are both motivated and on the same page, their surly demeanor wouldn't bother me at all -- in fact I kind of like it. I'm tired of having players in our locker room who are comfortable with losing. I'm not going to name names, but I bet a lot of us would come up with the same ones.
