Top 100 NBA Players: #58 - Rajon Rondo

Rajon Rondo

Rondo is one of the youngest player to appear on this list so far, and you may wonder if he has done enough in his short career to merit his placement among the all-time greats, especially with his performance over the past few seasons. He may not have a huge list of career accomplishments, but what he did in Boston was pretty impressive.

First of all, he has already won a championship as a starting point guard in 2008. During that season he may have been overshadowed by the "Big Three" of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen, but he wasn't far behind them in playoff production. He had more steals and assists than any other player to appear in the playoffs that year, and it quickly became clear that the Celtics were more than just 3 players.

The following season, despite only making it to the second round, he once again had the most playoff assists of any player. That season he was the best player on the Celtics in the postseason, boosting his averages to 16.9 points, 9.7 rebounds, 9.8 assists, and 2.5 steals. In 2010, he was the best playoff player for the Celtics once again, and he led them all the way back to the NBA Finals. Look at the playoff numbers for the four Celtics stars that year.

Rondo - 15.8 pts, 5.6 reb, 9.3 ast, 1.9 stl
Garnett - 15.0 pts, 7.4 reb, 2.5 ast, 1.1 stl
Pierce - 18.8 pts, 6.0 reb, 3.4 ast, 1.0 stl
Allen - 16.1 pts, 3.3 reb, 2.6 ast, 0.9 stl

Rondo was scoring and rebounding just as much as his bigger teammates, had more steals than any of them, and had more assists than all three of them combined. During the regular season he was named to the All-Defensive First Team and should have been named to the All-NBA Second Team. 

Two years later he led the Celtics back to the Eastern Conference Finals one more time, despite Garnett and Pierce continuing to get more accolades. They went clear to game 7 that year in the conference finals, but LeBron James and the Heat kept them from making another Finals appearance. If you doubt that Rondo was the best player on the team that postseason, here are the stats from that year's playoffs:

Rondo - 17.3 pts, 6.7 reb, 11.9 ast, 2.4 stl
Garnett - 19.2 pts, 10.3 reb, 1.5 ast, 1.2 stl
Pierce - 18.9 pts, 6.1 reb, 3.1 ast, 1.5 stl

As you can see, Rondo was a major reason that the Celtics were able to be so good for those 5 seasons, even performing better than the so-called Big 3 for most of that time. Even though he hasn't been the same player since the Celtics broke up the team, he did lead the league in assists again this past season, and maybe a fresh start in Chicago will help get his career back on track.