The Argument for Rajon Rondo Staying in Boston
WALTHAM, Mass. — Call it a show of solidarity—for now, anyway.
Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge took the stage alongside Rajon Rondo as the point guard faced a sizable contingent of reporters at Celtics media day on Monday. The pair presented a united front while facing a host of questions on the nature of Rondo’s hand injury, offseason trade rumors and the point guard’s desire to remain in Boston long-term.
The scene set the stage for what is the main storyline of the Celtics' 2014-15 season: Are Rondo’s days in green coming to an end?
Rondo attempted to brush off that idea as he spoke with a calm and playful demeanor to the assembled media with his broken left hand in a sling.
“The fans, the people here make me want to stay,” Rondo declared when asked about his desire to remain in Boston. “The organization has been great. I can’t say enough about Danny [Ainge] and [Celtics co-owner] Wyc [Grousbeck].
“When I walk down the street, the fans embrace me from day one. Even when we won a championship, people don’t just appreciate us winning. It’s more of a thank-you. It’s a love for the game. These people here know the game, and they care for it. They know when you’re BS'ing them around and you’re not playing as hard as you can. The love is kind of overwhelming in Boston. Why wouldn’t I want to stay here?”
Rondo’s sunny media-day disposition is likely to be cast aside by doubters for plenty of legitimate reasons. He's coming off a disappointing 2013-14 campaign in which he played just 30 games and shot a career-low 40.3 percent from the field after taking nearly the entire first half of the season to rehab from ACL surgery.
The four-time All-Star may love the fanbase, but the ugly truth is that the Celtics are in the midst of what could be a lengthy rebuilding project, while Rondo is in the prime of his career at age 28. Does Rondo have the patience to wait for the turnaround? It's fair to wonder when he openly admitted he is “intrigued” by the prospect of free agency next summer, as Baxter Holmes of The Boston Globe reported back in January.
“I’m pretty smart. I know this isn’t a championship team,” Rondo said before giving Ainge a vote of confidence. “We’re going to go out there every night and fight hard. I think if we’ll continue to do the little things and believe in each other and believe in Brad Stevens, we’ll surprise a lot of people.
"I have complete trust in Danny. The year we had the worst year of my career, in two months we turned it around. I’m not worried about what he’s capable of doing; he’s done it.”
Rondo sounds optimistic about his team’s future, but there’s also the issue of how much money the Celtics would be willing to spend to bring back the polarizing star next summer as they reconstruct the roster. An in-season extension for the 28-year-old does not seem feasible for the time being.
"We tried to sign Rajon a couple of times, but it doesn't make sense for Rajon to sign [now]," Ainge said. "If you know the collective bargaining agreement, it makes no financial sense for him to re-sign. It's something we'd like to do, but under the current negotiations it's unrealistic to be able to do that."
If the Celtics want to bring back Rondo, they will have to wait until next offseason, and they’ll have to open up their checkbook. The point guard admitted Monday that he believes he’s worth a maximum contract offer, a stance Ainge did not dispute.
"I think a four-time All-Star by the time he's [28] years old would qualify for max based on what we've seen in the marketplace," Ainge said. "If I were Rajon and I were Rajon's agent, I would definitely say that. But since I'm negotiating against him, I'll withhold."
The idea of letting Rondo go may have become a less appealing scenario this summer once the rebuilding Celtics witnessed firsthand the challenges of acquiring a superstar via their failed pursuit of former Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love. That reality appears to have strengthened Rondo’s importance to the team in Ainge’s eyes.
“Players like Rondo are hard to find,” Ainge said last week at the Celtics Shamrock Foundation golf tournament. “Here we are trying to make big deals, and it’s hard to make big deals—it’s hard to get free agents—without players with some cache. And Rondo is our best player, simply.”
The Celtics will be able to offer Rondo a contract worth over $108 million dollars over five years, based on the NBA’s estimated salary-cap value of $66.5 million for the 2015-16 season, according to Larry Coon's CBA FAQ blog. Other teams will be limited to presenting the veteran guard with a four-year deal worth roughly $83.5 million as their top offer.
The edge of an extra year of security and nearly $25 million in salary gives Boston a sizable advantage over other teams in potential negotiations with Rondo, but will the team want to commit a large part of its future to a player Grousbeck labeled as "stubborn" just last week in an interview on WBZ-TV's Sports Final?
There is no clear answer to that question yet, but a lack of attractive alternatives may make bringing back Rondo the best path for the team to take.
In the interim, a trade possibility will remain on the table. From Boston’s perspective, the only reason it makes sense to move Rondo is if Ainge can get fair value for him in the trade market. Ainge spoke to the challenge of finding such a deal in an interview with Felger and Mazz on WBZ-FM back in February. The issue? There isn’t a high demand for point guards at the moment:
"There are a lot of people that have their franchise point guards. When they go draft and bring in their guy, they don’t want to pay a heavy price to get a player of Rajon’s caliber … they are just going to let their guy go [develop]. And now you have a lot of point guards in the league right now, there are 20 out of 30 teams probably or more that have franchise point guards they really like.
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A thin market would result in a limited return for the star guard, a scenario that would fail to advance the Celtics' rebuild.
This isn’t just an issue that affects the Celtics, though. Think about it this way: Say 10 teams are in the market for a point guard next summer. It’s likely just a couple of those teams will have the kind of space under the salary cap needed to ink Rondo to a big contract. Will any of those teams be more attractive destinations for Rondo than Boston?
Only time will tell, but the combination of these variables makes the prospect of Rondo signing an extension with Boston a potentially alluring proposition for both sides. For now, however, Rondo’s focus remains on the task at hand while he waits for the next stage of his career to unfold.
“Everything happens for a reason...I can’t jump to July 1 already," Rondo admitted. "I’ve got to live in the moment and take care of what I need to take care of as far starting this training camp off right and being on the sideline and encouraging the young guys and help lead them from that standpoint.”
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