Boston Celtics: Can the C's Win a Title with Rajon Rondo as Their Best Player?

The point guard position represents the most important spot in an NBA lineup. 

He's the floor general, the distributor, the driver of the bus, what have you. If an offense, with all of its sets and intricacies and nooks and crannies, gets run efficiently and effectively, a team's chances of winning increase dramatically. 

The responsibility of making this happen falls on the shoulders of the point guard. Which makes it at least somewhat ironic that when it comes to winning a championship, the point guard's role changes.

And that is why if Rajon Rondo is the Celtics' best player, they will not be able to win a title.

Go back and look at every NBA championship winner throughout the history of the league. The only ones that featured a pure point guard as NBA Finals MVP were the 1989-90 Detroit Pistons, on which Isiah Thomas was the man, the Pistons again in '03-'04, with Chauncey Billups, and the '06-'07 Spurs, with Tony Parker.

You could point to Magic Johnson on all those '80s Lakers teams, but whether or not Magic was a "pure" point guard in the truest sense of the word as it relates (or related in that era) to the position, is open to debate.

And going way, way back, you could argue that Bob Cousy was the best player on the 1956-57 Celtics, but Bill Russell was also on the first-ever C's championship squad, which immediately renders that argument moot.

The bottom line is that now, in the current age of point guards, it's not uncommon to see the guy running the show also being his team's best player to no avail.

Look no further than Steve Nash, the league MVP in '04-'05 and '05-'06. His Phoenix teams were bounced in the Western Conference finals both of those years by teams (San Antonio and Dallas) featuring seven-footers—Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki—as their top options.

Isiah and Magic were the only point guards who struck the right balance between scoring and distributing. Those two were masters of being able to set up their teammates and make them better, yet still be able to take the game over offensively if that's what was needed.

Rondo, for all of his brilliance and ability, is not that kind of offensive player. His streak of consecutive games with double-digit assists is now at 18 entering Wednesday's game against Atlanta, and there is no doubt that he can control a game as well as anyone in the league.

But if ever a situation arose in which he had to shoulder the offensive load as opposed to any of the Celtics' three future Hall of Famers, the team would be in trouble.

Rondo is not a shooter (he averages just 11 field-goal attempts per game), nor is he particularly adept at getting to the foul line and converting (his career 62 percent free-throw shooting percentage is actually better than his average from the stripe this season).

There is a school of thought that Rondo already is the Celtics best player thanks to this amazing, current run. But as good as he's been, and as well as the Celtics have played since the All-Star break (their 18 wins in that time is tops in the league), where would they be without Paul Pierce (22.6 PPG, 7.4 RPG in his last 10 games)?

Or Kevin Garnett, who has looked as good as he has in years of late and is putting up 17 points and eight rebounds per game over the past month?

Rondo is a great player, an All-Star and a championship-winning point guard. He is key to the C's title hopes.

But he's not the key. Which is fine.

Not many point guards are.