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Originally Posted by BishopMVP
Rondo does go through his weird stretches (certainly when he was going for his 10+ assist game streak) where he looks to pass wayyyy too much, but I'm not sure how much you can those percentages on Rondo. His main pick and roll partner has been Kevin Garnett, who loves to pick and pop - pair him with a Blake Griffin or Tyson Chandler who crashes to the basket most of the time and I'm sure his percentages would change.
Overall though, Houston makes no sense.
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He'll definitely change up his style somewhat now that Garnett's gone, but the main benefit of a pick and pop guy shouldn't be the shot itself. A pick and pop guy is supposed to allow your guard an easier path to get to the rim since the opposing big guy can't do as good a job at cutting off the guard's penetration because he's also worrying about getting back to the shooter. That leaves just one big guy to protect the rim, and that sets up the whole cascade of help defense that usually results in the corner threes everyone loves so much.
Since Rondo can't shoot and doesn't look to attack the rim, you can just play vanilla defense where everyone stays on his original man and Rondo's defender trails him as he heads into the paint. Since Rondo's defender just has to be in his general vicinity to dissuade him from taking a shot at the rim and nobody else has to overcommit to Rondo, the resulting shot is more likely to be a low-quality look like a contested long two.
If Rondo ran a pick and roll with Chandler or Griffin, the defense would just completely sag in. When Rondo's man goes completely under on a screen, the roll man doesn't have an unimpeded path to crash to the basket. The other three players on the team would need to be ace three-point shooters for the spacing to be anything less than abysmal.
That gets at why it's hard to see Rondo on Houston - or any serious contender - in the near future. When you get deep into the playoffs, the defenses are so good that you need at least three offensive threats on the floor to create some breathing room on that end. Look at how bad the Spurs made Memphis look, and consider how often the Heat's offense did a 180 when they subbed Wade out for a shooter. If your point guard can't shoot, that means at least one of your bigs has to be a shooter, and the list of big guys who can shoot without being a liability on the defensive end is extremely short.