RealGM

I just realized, after all the crap Rajon endured on this website
over whether he was worth his new contract
(the Celtics got away with Grand Theft Rondo, a felony);

82games.com ranked Rajon as the 13th best player in the 2009 playoffs.
16 playoff teams mean 80 starters. 82 games ranked the top 25.

The numbers can be seen here
http://www.82games.com/0809/playoffs/playoffs.htm

For the record, Ray Allen was ranked 19th, and Pierce 25th.

Of course, this excluded the players from the 14 teams that did not make the playoffs.

Rondo deserves to be on the Eastern Conference All-Star Team this year.
If Doc gets named Coach for the best record, you can bet that he will lobby for Rondo.

I'd like to see Andrew Bogut make it as a reserve as well.

Good post, unfortunately I'm not too optimistic about Rondo's chances making the AS roster. Sure he along with Bogut deserve it but the majority of the all-star game is a popularity contest. It would an amazing sight seeing four starters from Boston representing the EC though.

Well the popularity contest thing works both ways, at least you'll see Garnett starting.

Regardless, I think the coaches will get Rondo in anyway.

Grand Theft Rondo...I love that...

It's always interesting to me how people respond to the various advanced stats that are out there when making their judgments. Often it seems that people believe what the stats tell them when it supports their intuitions, and rejects it when it doesn't.

In this instance, though, I do believe that Rondo was definitely an impact player in last year's playoffs and made a big improvement from the year before.

The other interesting thing to me is how consistent the marks were for Pierce and Allen from last year's playoffs vs the year before. Last year Pierce's Roland Rating was +3.7 and Allen's +4.5, and the previous year Pierce was +3.7 and Allen +5.0...essentially the same. That tells me that on the whole their contribution impacts were very similar over the two seasons, even though the team was playing a different style of ball with different personnel. Rondo was the player who stepped up the most in year 2.

Come on.. It pains me to see people belabor 'advanced statistics' like this 'settles' arguments. The C's only play TWO of the playoff teams - and in on of those series (Orlando) Rondo played poorly. So what it comes down to is that Rondo beat up on D. Rose and the Bulls. That's nice but its not really a wide sample range - and invalidates the statistic in settling these kind of "arguments."

He played great against the 7th seed then crapped out against the first borderline contender that the Celtics faced.

Congrats!