I think we all know why the C’s offense looked overmatched last night: Rajon Rondo. He is the creator now. He is the engine through which the C’s offense gets most of its clean looks, and he could not be the creator tonight against Orlando. Really, you don’t need to know anything beyond this: Rajon Rondo played 42 seconds in the 4th quarter. That’s really it. And this is a problem, because Rondo struggled against the Magic in the playoffs last season, too.
So what is Orlando’s Rondo kryptonite? If you watch the tape, you’ll see two things: 1) The Magic sag off of him at all times. That’s just smart defense. Concede the jumper, play with Rajon’s confidence and position yourself as best as possible to prevent penetration. They are not silly enough to chase Rondo out to halfcourt and get sucked into defending screen/rolls out there like the Bobcats and the Warriors.
There’s a lot of blame being heaped on Rondo today by Celtics blogs and I’m not sure I agree with it. Zach does a good job of looking at some of the things that frustrate him, but honestly, I didn’t come away with that. I came away with thinking that the Celtics, honestly, just did not go to him that often. How many times did you see Ray Allen get the ball on the perimeter to set a play? How many times did you see he or Pierce trying to manage and produce at the same time, often to negative results? Rondo may not be able to score against the Magic, but he can create opportunities, wide open shots. Which, given the way the Celtics were shooting, may not have helped, but wouldn’t have hurt.
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I wrote this over on Celticsblog last night, but I think the C’s issue right now is not Rondo, but rather just a lack of inside scoring in general. I think their shots aren’t falling right now simply because with Wallace in there alongside a still-recovering KG, the Celtics are mainly all setting up on offense around the perimeter. It’s much easier to get a hand up on perimeter jump shots when there’s no threat in the middle to worry about.
Rondo, Pierce and Ray are not back to the basket players; so while they do tend to get a decent amount of points in the paint, it’s almost always on drives. Perkins is a slightly above average post scorer, but Boston doesn’t tend to run their offense through him too much (and last night he was hampered with fouls). KG and Rasheed do have plenty of post offense, but KG seems less capable of playing in there while recovering from his knee surgery, and Rasheed has really never shown much desire to play out of the post (much to his detriment, IMO, since he can be damn near unstoppable there).
I’ve heard many people saying that Sheed and KG together makes it tough for defenses cause it pulls centers out to the perimeter. Now, while this may be true, I’d say that if both guys are camping out around the perimeter along with the shooters at 1,2 and 3, then isn’t the offense essentially five guys swinging it from one side to the other and hoping for an open shot or a seam in the defense that they can drive through? If so, that’s not very good offense, IMO.