fishmike wrote:SupremeCommander wrote:(I think it was Kevin McHale that said this:) Rondo's biggest weakness, in a way, becomes his a huge asset. Because guys lay off him, he can get the head of steam, but it also opens up the passing lanes. Yeah, you'd prefer to have Rondo shoot, but playing guys with that much buffer is a huge mistake. Whenever a team goes into "the prevent defense" it usually ends up becoming a huge mistake
Rondo's game has a hole in it, but it doesnt change the fact that he's a great player and 10x the player that AC or Douglas are right now. If there was some simple way of stopping Rondo he wouldnt be a great player. People here over simplify a little too much. Rondo cant shoot jumpers, so make him shoot jumpers. If we cant do this it must be poor coaching right? Pa-leeze
Here's a heads up: He's no doubt been dealing with that scouting report since puberty, so he's got a pretty solid plan for dealing with that strategy, and because he's a hell of a player he's going to find a way to beat you. Just because a player has a hole in his game (most do) doesnt mean its exploitable all the time.
Actually a way you can make things difficult is playing ball denial or trapping him out high forcing him to give the ball up. Once this is done stay on him as if he's Ray Allen and let someone else bear the load of running the Celtic offense at least for more possessions. I agree Rondo is a very good player, if he's not doing an excellent job orchestrating he's playing very good defense and crashing the board.
His critics always love to talk about how he can't shoot and that he plays with 3 HOFrs but never discuss how good of a defensive player he is nor rebounder from his position and his numbers tend to increase in the playoffs including his shooting
Regardless we had no real scheme on him from Game 1 to 4 which is pathetic. Now 2yrs ago we tried to sick Effries on him, which is an actual game plan the problem we had then he'd blow by Effries to the cup with nobody manning the paint. Say we implore the same type of scheme except with Williams guarding him and funneling him to Turiaf/Stat that's a little more difficult as you're pressuring him with a big into a big into a big. The more you trap and deny Rondo means less ball movement and dribbling between and around our D and more one-on-one play from Pierce/Allen/Garnett<---------I'd prefer this strategy over that disasster coaching scheme we saw for 4gms.
Advanced Scouting comes into play here you know something we were also extremely weak at until like latter 2010(still questionable). Go pull up Team Defensive statistics against Rondo and see who he performed weakest against and study the various schemes applied and mimic them to whatever degree necessary.
