There's a number of my fellow Celtics fans that expressed significant dislike as soon as RR was shipped to Dallas, turning into some senseless denial state of mind towards all the guy has been doing in green uniform. Pro-Rondo fans have been clashing with last-hours haters just outside the TD Garden, when not right on the standings.
Personally, I have treasured every single game I have seen Rajon wearing the Celtics jersey and I have never noticed anything but total devotion to the team he has been playing for.
Out of pure curiosity and, yes, the wish to keep watching the guy creating basketball on the hardwood, I watched every Dallas game since RR was acquired, until their last game.
Their coach is a former Celtic and I always thought of him as a pretty straight guy, but I really don't think what happened in Dallas was Rondo's fault.
They knew who he was, how did he play, his trademarks.
My feeling is that Rajon was acquired by Dallas management and ownership but Carlisle didn't really ask for him, nor was he happy to have RR in his roster because he had no clue about how to implement his skills into his
"ball-to-Dirk-no-matter-what-system".
The rest is history. Apart from the ridiculous amount of experts, bloggers, reporters, insiders... each one with one brand new truth and RR the main star of their horror motion picture. Everyone feeling entitled to have an opinion and spreading it on their anonymous blogs as pure Gospel, though they basically had never even got close to Rondo, nor they ever had developed any reliable insight.
Ask his former teammates in Boston, read what Kevin Garnett or Paul Pierce think and say about Rajon and you can do the math.
"That's that fire, man," Garnett says, every syllable punctuated with his signature fury. "That's that alpha fire that's in you. That's that knuckle-down, I'm-not-afraid-of-anything relentless attitude, like, 'I'm coming at you and if you're not ready, then I'm coming through you.' That's what makes him who he is. I always told him, 'Don't ever apologize for that, because that's your mojo, that's what makes you who you are."
And yes, Rondo plays pranks. So you know.