Rondo

Rondo is one of my favorite players.  He is the perfect example of why flawed characters are more interesting than flawless characters.  His flaw is so glaring and so obvious - his inability to shoot - that it manifests itself in other aspects of his game.  He makes crazy bad and sometimes insanely creative passes to avoid shooting.  Fascinating to watch.

A classic Rondo play was the other night.  The Celtics were down by 1, I think against the Hawks, with the Hawks inbounding the ball with like 8 seconds left.  Rondo somehow anticipates the inbound pass, steals it, and dribbles down court without a time out and tries to make a desperate play as time is running out and loses the ball on a turnover.  The Celtics lost the game and Rondo famously got mad at a cameraman after the game while he wore a ridiculous jacket.

Last night, another similar play happened.  The Celtics are down, need a hoop, Rondo wiggles his way into the paint to get an offensive rebound amongst giants, somehow skies and grabs a one handed rebound in traffic (this is a really amazing thing to see as Rondo is about 6'2"), then goes up very softly for the put back and the shot gets blocked.

Both these plays were unbelievable and totally ineffective.  I almost can't see any other point guard, maybe any other player in the NBA, making that end of game steal or that rebound...but there is no mincing words, he made mistakes on the back end of each play.