He is a better defender and has greater ball-handling and passing ability
I believe both Rondo and Billups equally see the court well, but Rondo's spacing (his defenders give him room b/c of his suspect jumpshooting) and his large hands allow for him to make much better passes

He can also drive and finish really well, and we all know he's done this against the Knicks
In fact, it was against the Knicks that Rondo had his career high 24 assists

Billups won't be able to keep up with Rondo

jimimou wrote:no way billups can keep up w rondo - he's just too fast for chauncey. i dont think that is the match-up that determines the series either. it's not about one player vs another imho. celts defense is vastly superior to ours, so our ability to make shots will be the key factor.

See this article

One of the things that makes the Boston Celtics so hard to defend is that you have so much talent on the court at the same time, that if you focus too much on the basketball, you are going to get beat off of the ball. The Celtics’ are the best “cutting” team in the league, scoring 1.32 points every possession that a cutter gets the basketball. For the Celtics, the biggest threat to cut to the rim are the bigs. Defenses tend to start ball watching on the outside (where you have Rondo, Pierce, and Allen), that the bigs are able to cut right to the rim and usually end up wide open. Each of the three Celtics’ bigs (Glen Davis – 67.4% shooting on cuts, Kevin Garnett 70.6% shooting on cuts, and Shaq 79% shooting on cuts) have a PPP of over 1.3 when they cut to the rim:

It is weird to think that a team with Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett can be considered a bad spot up shooting team, but the numbers show that they are. According to Synergy, the the Celtics are 27th in the NBA in terms of points per possession (.912 PPP) and 23rd in the league in terms of FG% (38.8%). The biggest reason why the Celtics are so poor spotting up statistically is because of Glen Davis. Davis is a very poor shooter when he is catching and shooting on the outside, but that hasn’t stopped him from attempting the second most catch and shoot jumpers, only behind Kevin Garnett. On those shots, Davis is shooting 33.6%. Davis is much more effective cutting to the rim (like we have seen above), and putting his head down and attacking the rim

Of course such numbers pale in comparison percentage wise to our own JJ who is shooting a scorching .643 on all FG and batting a thousand on 3's over the last five games.

CrushAlot wrote:

knicks1248 wrote:I think billups will spend very little time guarding rondo..that's going to be left to carter, jj' and TD..

Jj had 2 games last season when he shut rondo down completely. Its not so much how they play defnsively but how well they balance the attack and run the team..yeah he had 24ast...but we lost by 2pts..

I hope this how they approach defending Rondo.

Exactly, a defensive minded coach will throw different people and looks at Rondo. While MDA will use different players against him, I think thats MDA just telling his players to guard him w/o no real defensive gameplan in mind. Back when Pat the Rat was coach and JVG was an assistant, they would tell their players to be physical with their opponents. Not stupid physical where they would get called for everything, but little things to get under their skin and be intimidating. Now I know they arent allowed to handcheck anymore, but for the playoffs against these Celts, we need to be more physical than them or we will lose. Its a good test and great learning experience for next year regardless the outcome, the Celts are a very tough and crafty team.