Rajon Rondo says Boston Celtics need to stop LeBron to win a championship – NBA News
Rajon Rondo has been making a lot of headlines recently, giving interesting interviews while on a trip to Asia for one of his sponsors.
Rondo was in Hong Kong as part of the Red Bull promotional tour and talked to the South China Morning Post in an interview. He opened up about his childhood, his dream of becoming an NFL quarterback, dominating in high school and
his eventual rise in the Boston Celtics team.
Rondo also talked about what it would take for the Boston Celtics to win the NBA championship next season, and said that he felt the defence and rebounding ability of the team needed to improve in order to clinch the title again.
He also paid respect to LeBron James by saying that the Celtics needed to stop him if they wanted to come out of the east.
“We’ve not been up to par in terms of winning the championship but we’ve been in every round in every fight. There are a few things we have to do – obviously stopping LeBron. But that’s easier said than done. We’ve got to do a
better job of team rebounding, keeping guys out of the paint. That’s not just when playing Miami but overall. We got to get better rebounding and defensively,” said the Celtics point guard.
Rondo is right about stopping James since he single handedly won game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Celtics for his team and pushed the series to 7 games while going back to Miami to play the deciding game.
Boston Celtics have also not been the best rebounding team lately, lacking the presence and size in the paint to dominate the boards. Boston grabbed 19.7 percent of their missed shots last season, the worst offensive rebounding
percentage for that season in the NBA. Their opponents got the rebounds on 27.6 percent of the misses, which means that they were poor in rebounding on both ends of the floor.
The Celtics need to improve in this department, and need someone who can dominate the boards. With Chris Wilcox back and two good prospects in Jared Sullinger and Fab Melo, this problem can be solved this season.
Finally, Rondo talked about improving the defence of the team. The Celtics actually had a pretty good defence last season - second best to be precise, giving up 95.5 points per 100 possessions. They also held teams to the second
lowest shooting percentage in the league.
If the Celtics need to improve on an area, it is actually the offence. The Celtics managed only 89.9 points per 100 possessions last season, ranked 24th in the league. Ray Allen struggled in the season and the Celtics
had no help from the bench, owing to a series of injuries. That left almost all of the scoring load on Rondo, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce.
This season, the Celtics have a strong bench with Courtney Lee and Jason Terry, and Jeff Green’s return gives them a scoring option in the starting roster as well. This is probably why the Celtics are being perceived as having
a better roster as compared to last season, and do have a better chance of going all the way to the NBA Finals.
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