I spent the entire game focused on Rondo on the defensive side of the ball. For three quarters, when he was in the game, he played zero defense. On screens, he either went lazily under the screen, or simply stopped. When away from the ball, he completely lost track of his man, who many time ended up shooting a corner three. In the fourth quarter, he came out, and except for a couple of occasions, played good defense. Which showed me that if he really wants to play defense, he can. With Cauley-Stein and Curry playing the bulk of the minutes in the second half, we actually held the Jazz under 50 p0ints for the half.
Rudy isn't a number two guy. He's a great number three. A number two needs to be someone that is almost interchangeable with your number one guy. Like Durant and Westbrook, or Lillard and McCollum. Gay is not someone you want to hand the reigns to if Cuz goes down. If you can't acquire a solid number two, then you surround your number one with four number three. Not easy to come up with a Shaq and Kobe. And Gay isn't Kobe!
Hi Baja.

I don't know what these points have to do with each other but I'll just treat them as two different posts.
I have to agree with you that Rondo's defense this season has been mostly poor. And while I think the team in general is suffering defensively because of coaching strategies -- undersized lineups, playing the entire 4th quarter most nights with our best defenders on the bench, switching on screens even when it's not necessary -- with Rondo most of the problems are directly related to effort. He helps off his man on basically every single play which means they have a wide-open three whenever they want it. He goes for the reach-in steal when he should be sliding his feet and denying a path to the basket. The sad thing is, I've seen plenty of players who don't know how to play defense and Rondo isn't one of them. But I've also seen terrible defenders have more of an impact than Rondo is having this season simply by hustling their butts off.
I think you're directing these comments at me because I'm the one who wanted Rondo here in the first place and acted as his main apologist on this board. So confession time -- I was a big fan of Rondo coming out of Kentucky and I loved the fire he showed in the playoffs with the Celtics but I didn't watch him play all that much from 2012 to 2015. And I have to admit, while I was aware that his defense had declined since then, I'm shocked to see how bad it is. I don't know if he forgot that he made his money in this league as an All-NBA defender, if the championship ring and Boston media fawning went to his head, or he just got lazy playing next to Avery Bradley. Or is it a matter of conserving energy to stay on the floor and protect his knees in a contract year? I really don't know what his problem is on that end, but whatever it is it's a big concern if we're planning to bring him back. To go from where he was just 5 years ago to where he is now is a shocking de-evolution.
As for Rudy Gay -- I really didn't want to like him. I saw the numbers before he came here and I'm not big on advanced stats, but there was definitely a big gap between his reputation as an elite scorer and the actual production captured in the box scores. In fact,
I expended a great deal of energy about 2 years ago arguing that we shouldn't sign him to an extension. Then last season happened and he didn't just match his production from 55 games in 2013/2014 (already the best of his career and looking like the product of small sample size), he was even better. For a full season he was a legit second option and deserved an All-Star nod for the first time in his career. So at this point we're looking at 123 games of All-Star level production with the same team. Maybe he is for real -- maybe he found his niche playing next to DeMarcus and we just need to get a quality PG to move the ball effectively and some defensive role-players to help us get stops?
Then this season happened. Uh oh. Back to reality? Could be. I've argued before that Rudy isn't a real #2 option so it's not much of a stretch for me to go back there. Ironic that I'm suddenly one of the only Kings fans defending Rudy after I ripped into him 2 summers ago isn't it? But I try to keep my emotions in check and let the data speak for itself. And there's no denying Rudy Gay has looked awful this season. Bad enough for all of the stat geeks who crept into the shadows last season to come back and say "I told you so". The only reason I'm defending Rudy Gay at all after this season is that he was too good here for too long to merely be dismissed as a fluke. And George Karl's idiocy has permeated everything else on this team so I'm always going to wonder in the back of my head if we didn't have a playoff roster here with a competent coach. Cause this was genius level incompetence. You have to have a special kind of brain and a hall-of-fame resumes worth of credibility to orchestrate this level of incompetence. You're probably right though that he's not a solid #2 -- if for no other reason than inconsistency. He peaks as an occasional #1 guy every month or so but his baseline production over his whole career is more like a #3 than a #2.