Bold Predictions for Rajon Rondo's 2014-15 NBA Season

There aren't many NBA players who could be called bolder than Rajon Rondo.

He's so bold that I had to bold his name in that sentence.

Everything from his attitude to the way he plays to his fashion style is bold. If one had to guess his favorite beer, it would be Guinness. His favorite soap opera? The Bold and the Beautiful. He might even send off his tweets from a Blackberry Bold.

So, it should be interesting to make some bold predictions for Rondo's first healthy year since 2011-12. He came back from an ACL injury last season and showed some of that old boldness. With a full healthy offseason under his belt, 2014-15 is a season of intrigue.

In a few short weeks, Rondo will try to lead a young team through an NBA season, boldly going where he has never gone before.

Rajon Rondo Will Lead the League in Assists Per Game

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Rondo actually led the NBA in assists per game in 2012-13 and 2011-12, making this perhaps not all that bold of a prediction.

However, as any Rondo detractor worth his or her salt will tell you, he was dropping dimes to Hall of Famers like Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen during those seasons. Now, he has very limited shooting surrounding him and will be counted on to score a great deal more than he was in those days.

There is also a glut of talented point guards running around the NBA right now. Chris Paul, who led the league last season, is back with a stacked Los Angeles Clippers roster. John Wall has matured nicely into an All-Star with the Washington Wizards. Ricky Rubio has an exciting new crew that will be getting a lot of possessions off with the Minnesota Timberwolves as well. 

Still, Rondo will have the ball in his hands as much as, if not more than, any other distributor in the league this year. Even with him taking 1.4 more field-goal attempts per game in 2012-13 than he did the year before, he averaged 11.1 assists per game. His shot-attempt numbers should increase again, but given his mentality and creativity, it is tough to see him averaging less than nine or 10 assists per game.

With a relatively weak shooting roster surrounding Rondo last season and him shooting 11.7 times per game (the second highest rate of his career), he was able to average 9.8 assists per night over 30 games. That would have put him second in the league.

Rajon Rondo Will Play in the All-Star Game

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As we mentioned previously, there is an overflow of very good point guards playing basketball right now. It is actually a major reason that Rajon Rondo is such a difficult player to deal in a trade. Few teams in the league have a major need at the position.

So, when it comes time to select the All-Star team, it is a difficult group to crack. The 2013-14 Eastern Conference squad featured just two point guards, with John Wall and game MVP Kyrie Irving earning the nods. There were three shooting guards on the roster as well.

Rondo will again have stiff competition for a 2014-15 spot, going up against those two stars, as well as Kyle Lowry, a possibly healthy Derrick Rose and wild cards like Jeff Teague, Deron Williams and Michael Carter-Williams. 

The Celtics will also likely not be in contention at that point of the season and at worst could be sporting one of the league's worst records. That wouldn't reflect nicely on their best player. However, Irving made the team each of the past two seasons, while his Cleveland Cavaliers finished those years with 24 and 33 wins.

Rondo was on the Eastern Conference's team four times in the past, from 2009-10 through 2012-13.

If we believe that Rondo will be either leading the league in assists or close to it, he will be a tough player to ignore. He won't be popular enough to win the fan vote, even with the Boston Celtics faithful not having anyone else to vote for. However, he should show enough with his play to get on that roster.

Rajon Rondo Will Shoot 50 Percent from the Field

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Possibly the boldest claim you'll see is that Rajon Rondo will have a strong shooting season in 2014-15.

Over 30 games last season, he shot just 40.3 percent from the field. He is a notoriously poor outside shooter and has a career 25.2 percent clip from beyond the three-point arc. 

However, there are some signs that could point in the direction of Rondo having a solid season from the field and cracking that magical 50 percent mark. He has done so twice before, notching a 50.5 percent clip in 2008-09 (80 games) and 50.8 percent in 2009-10 (81 games). Neither of those years were flukes either, considering he averaged 11.2 shots per game in that second season and 9.5 in the first.

We have seen a more confident Rondo in recent years when it comes to pulling the trigger on jumpers. He is rapidly discovering how to use the space he is given, due to his dynamic passing ability and poor shooting, as a weapon. That is why we saw him put up more threes in 30 games last season (90) than he has in any full season over his entire career.

That confidence should be backed up by a fully healthy offseason and training camp of honing his shot. The new health will also have him getting to the rim. The year he got hurt, he was posting a career-high 12.2 field-goal attempts per game and shooting a respectable 48.4 percent.

Over at Hardwood Paroxysm, Scott Rafferty did a deep dive on Rondo as a shooter and came to the following conclusion.

"

Even if his numbers have been inflated over the years as a result of how defenses have played him, he’s proven that he can knock down midrange jumpers, thereby forcing teams to respect that and alter the way they try to slow him down. (Teams have also learnt that going over screens against Rondo is a death wish, so he’ll likely always get the space he needs if teams continue to go under screens.)

"

Rondo is a career 47.5 percent shooter; therefore, the 40.3 percent in 2013-14 was the aberration, not those 50-plus percent seasons.

Rajon Rondo Will Shoot 70 Percent from the Free-Throw Line

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One of the biggest and most glaring weaknesses in Rajon Rondo's game is free-throw shooting. While never poor enough to warrant a great deal of concern, it has lingered as a nagging blemish on his career.

Rondo is a career 62.1 percent free-throw shooter. That's a pretty poor number for a guard, especially one who holds the ball in his hands as often and in as many crucial situations as he has and will.

He has never even come close to breaching 70 percent. His best season from the charity stripe was actually his rookie year, when he shot 64.7 percent on 2.4 attempts per game. He even bottomed out as a 56.8 percent shooter in 2010-11.

Because it was never poor enough to warrant concern, it has never been corrected. Free-throw shooting was never a high priority for a guy who had so many other things going on that needed work.

However, with Rondo being seriously injured for the first time in his career, there wasn't much else he could work on. While recovering from his ACL injury, he had ample time to get his rhythm down while standing still at the free-throw line.

He was back up to 64.5 percent on 2.4 attempts per game before he got hurt, so it isn't a steep climb from there if he has put in the necessary work.

In 2012, Rondo met with free-throw guru Cob Carlson, who appeared to help him raise his game from 59.7 percent in 2011-12 to that 64.5 percent in 2012-13. Unfortunately, his injury halted that campaign and we haven't seen the full maturity of his work with Carlson.

"I was introduced to Cob during the 2012 season," Rondo is quoted as saying on Carlson's site, Automaticfreethrows.com. "I worked with him on my free throw shooting and have improved my shot with a routine that has helped me feel comfortable and confident at the line."

According to The Boston Globe's Stan Grossfeld in January of 2012, Carlson has a long history of working with players to improve their style at the line.

Rajon Rondo Will Be Playing When Boston Visits Sacramento on Feb. 20

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The idea of Rajon Rondo even starting the season on this Boston Celtics roster seems like a stretch to some people. The statement that he will be wearing a green No. 9 jersey come late February is a bold prediction.

Boston's first game post-trade deadline (Feb. 19) is Feb. 20 at the Sacramento Kings. 

The most recent news surrounding possible Rondo trades comes from second-year head coach Brad Stevens in an interview with Howard Herman of The Berkshire Eagle. 

"I love him," Stevens said. "I really think he's a big part of what we're doing. Hopefully, he can have a great year right from the get-go. I thought last year was tough from the standpoint that he never did have a chance to do any drill work or to rebuild habits. He just had to be thrown into the fire."

Rondo's head coach certainly isn't planning on life without his starting point guard. While that might not be the most unbiased source, few are closer to the situation or more knowledgeable about it than Stevens.

The player has been involved in trade rumors for nearly a decade now and has never been moved. While that can be said about a lot of players, including most recently Paul Pierce, it just comes with the territory with Rondo.

For all the factors going against him—namely his contract expiration and the rebuilding Celtics—there is still the matter of finding a willing trade partner who can create a package appealing enough to general manager Danny Ainge. That hasn't happened yet, and there is a fair chance it won't happen in the next five or six months.

The wording of this slide title also gives the out that if Rondo is traded, he might still be playing in this Feb. 20 contest. One of the Rondo suitors that get brought up on occasion has been the Kings, who have their 2016 and 2017 first-round picks, as well as somewhat attractive pieces in Ben McLemore, Nik Stauskas and Derrick Williams. They also have a need at point guard with Isaiah Thomas moving to the Phoenix Suns.