Rajon Rondo: Legitimate MVP Candidate? Legitimate MVP Candidate.

About two weeks ago, PeteB11 and I had a very short Gchat conversation:

Peter: Adam

When do we start throwing Rondo in theMVP conversation

Adam: right now?

Peter: He's an MVP candidate

there I said it

As you should know, Pete is a very funny guy, and I thought it was a very funny dialogue. "What a jokester, that Pete!" I thought to myself.

At the time, the only Celtics game I had watched was their opening statement against the Heat. Since then, I've watched five more of their contests, and I'm starting to realize that there's a good chance Pete was being as serious as your life.

In the "modern era" of the NBA (I'm going with '84-85 onward), three point guards have been donned MVP: Magic Johnson (thrice); Allen Iverson (once), and Steve Nash (twice). Three legends, three current or indisputable future Hall of Famers who each, if not redefined, added a very large footnote to what it means to be a point guard in the League. Two weeks ago, I would have given the stink eye to anyone claiming that Rondo was at a place in which we could compare him to any one of those three in their award-winning years.

I mean, Magic Johnson's ability to both score and set up opportunities for his teammates to do the same was something the likes of which we may never see again. No contest there. And Iverson, while not as great of a passer as Rondo, scored with the kind of ease that made his value a bit more obviously important to his team than Rondo's to his. So, yeah, no real comparison there either.

But then I started to think about Nash, and I realized that watching Rondo in last year's playoffs felt just about as exhilarating as watching Nash in his mid-decade form. I wondered if there was any statistical support for that feeling. Here are Nash's season stat lines from 2004-2005 and 2005-2006, his two MVP seasons:

	MP	FG%	3P	3P%	FT%	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TO	PTS
'04-'05	34.3	.502	1.3	.431	.887	3.3	11.5	1.0	0.1	3.3	15.5
'05-'06	35.4	.512	1.9	.439	.921	4.2	10.5	0.8	0.2	3.5	18.8

And here are Rondo's numbers for this year so far:

	MP	FG%	3P	3P%	FT%	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TO	PTS
'10-'11	41.1	.465	0.2	.400	.462	5.2	15.1	2.7	0.2	3.8	10.8

On a statistical level, Rondo has some obvious flaws, most notably in the free throw percentage and points categories. But there's a lot of time left in the season, and those numbers, while not likely to reach league leader status, will almost surely improve and get close to last year's .621 FT% and 13.7 PPG. Regardless, Rondo's assist and steal numbers, combined with his incredibly-solid-for-a-guard rebounding ability, may end up being so impressive that he can afford to be slightly below average in those areas and still be part of the conversation. Bottom line, Nash's stats from those two years don't seem all that more MVP-y to me than Rondo's current ones.


Now, Nash enthusiasts (and believe me, I count myself as one) might point out that there was something about those two Suns seasons that numbers can't express. And that is true: the fluidity of that D'Antoni offense was something spectacular. To say the team fired on all cylinders would imply that they had a ceiling, which is certainly debatable. Nash's MVP awards have so much to do with the complete and total sense of control he had over what was arguably the most high-powered offense the League has ever seen.

After watching numerous Celtics games this season, I am asserting that while the C's offense lacks the brilliant, organized chaos of those Suns teams, the way that Rondo controls the game is certainly akin to Nash's omnipotent court presence. He gets the ball exactly where it needs to be at the exact moment it needs to be there. He seems to singlehandedly have the say as to the tempo of the game. He allows his teammates to be better than they possibly could without him.

Does this all sound familiar? If not Steve Nash, perhaps we could compare Rondo's numbers and effect to those of John Stockton, who would have been an MVP in any other era. This comparison was made in an awesomely wonky TrueHoop post from April.



Like Nash, Stockton scored slightly more and shot free throws better than Rondo has up to this point, but he also did so partly out of necessity. Although he had Karl Malone and Jeff Hornacek to bulk up his dime numbers, there were not many other scoring options on those classic Jazz teams. They needed their point guard to shoot. The Celtics, on the other hand, have a more balanced offensive weaponry, and Rondo really just doesn't need to put the ball up very often. That said, he did reach career highs in field goal attempts and points last season, which lends support to my prediction that his numbers should continue to grow throughout the upcoming months.

On a stylistic level, we must also give Rondo some bonus points for the strange, manic way he gets from one area of the court to another. It is something more foreign, and therefore more exciting, than what we saw from Nash or Stockton, who were both incredibly riveting players in their own rights. As Andrew Abides pointed out to me a while back, it makes sense that Rondo apparently didn't watch much basketball growing up. His game doesn't look like anything we've seen before.

The season is early, sure. And there are other players whose numbers and whose effects on their teams may exceed what any non-Nash players offered in his two MVP seasons. Based on everything we've seen from Rondo so far, though, it's easy to imagine Pete typing those words with, for once, a very straight face.