“Nobody crossed him without a battle. He disliked almost everything, particularly his wife, his children, his neighbors, his church, his priest, his town, his state, his country, and the country from which he emigrated. Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the sun or the stars, or the universe, or heaven or hell." -John Fante
Current music: Shellac
Current pants: None
Current Cat: Roast Beef
Current mood: Suspicious
I never had any attachment to Rajon Rondo, nor any feeling for him at all but a hazy respect for his game. He never terrified me the way Chris Paul or some of the other super point guards did. That wasn't his function or purpose. His purpose was to make it easier for others to terrify me. He worked behind the scenes with a big old spotlight fixed on him. He was a quiet showboat. I knew he wasn’t a scrub, knew he was in fact quite amazing at a great many things. But I watched so few Celtics games that most of this was absorbed knowledge, stuff I knew that I ought to know, like trigonometry or the moon landing. Boston was a headache. The Celtics were annoying, both for their affected intensity and their unchivalrous scream-y paths to victory.
The only time I actually felt joy watching Rondo play was during his duel with young acne scarred Derrick Rose during the 2009 playoffs. Holy shit, now that was something. Whoever thought a series featuring Ben Gordon and John Salmons would go down in the NBA book of legends and lore? No one, not even Jesus. But Rondo was great in that series, and it is not fun to imagine him becoming even more of an abstract presence. As I said, I was never too fond of the little gremlin, but I'm worried to live in a world where Rajon Rondo doesn’t matter. Others may inspire more ire, but Rondo inspires a passionate ambivalence. Like the people loitering in the church in the last episode of LOST, it's his turn to move on or die trying.
Rajon Rondo is many things, many strange and boring and beautiful and perplexing and creepy things. He’s a pass first point guard with gigantic hands and eyes that have seen the end of the world. He’s a guy who scowled so hard at Jordan Crawford’s attempts to run an NBA offense and fumed at every trade rumor that devalued him. He’s a man that at one point owned a pair of two hundred dollar roller skates (which, since he is a literal millionaire many times over, is probably not all that outlandish)! He’s been operating under the assumption that he was the heir apparent for years, and yet those greybeards limped around the court for so long, denying him the reins. Rondo is a throwback, an old soul, a dour and down on his luck gumshoe detective in a game full of speakeasy patrons. He has too much rebellion in his guts for management types with their crisp Windsor knots and diminishing return smiles. Danny Ainge was ready to trade him many times because he’s such a pill. Some still blame him for Ray Allen’s departure. In later years, with an untenable situation growing more and obviously over and done with, Rondo would be accused of the most unforgivable and disgusting crime of all, the crime of “dropping an F bomb” on Doc Rivers during a team meeting. He said "fuck" or "fucked" or "fucker" to another grown man.
Doc Rivers, a minor Saint in most hoops circles, now coaches a different All-Star Point Guard. Rondo languishes in nowhere land, a discarded puppy; bitter, bent, and hopefully not broken. Too many have been broken recently.
Players fade in and out our peripheries. I can go an entire year without thinking about Joe Johnson, and I am no longer sure that Allen Iverson ever really existed. Rondo is always there, but he’s not. Even before his ACL injury, he felt half a ghost to me, and not a benign one. One that has no desire to murder the family living in the haunted house, but surely one that wanted to shake the bookshelves and write menacing things on bathroom mirrors. He’s an instigator, and can you blame him? Look at the dudes he came up with; no shrinking violets suited up for the Ubuntu Celtics. Rajon Rondo is the last scowling man standing from that championship team. That was a year that hardly seemed fair. They stomped all over the country (and Toronto) like Shamrock shrouded manifest destiny. His importance only grew the following years as the Boston mercenaries continued to give the rest of the league hysterics as they did a serviceable impression of a darkest timeline version of the San Antonio Spurs. Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce in their near primes were a formidable tag team, and Ray Allen daggers make for good highlight reels, but Rajon Rondo was the little disciple that could and it was harder and harder to ignore him. He made things happen without smiling. His single-minded obstinacy is part of what made the Ubuntu Celtics so successful. The guy is out of his mind competitive. This is the man who once reacted to a Connect Four loss to a child with the following words: "But did you notice I played the guy five more times and won them all? I had to show him, ‘You beat me, I’ll beat the shit out of you.’”
I hope that kid learned his lesson and never tried to win anything ever again and henceforth carried with him a healthy fear and mistrust of both his elders and celebrities.
His borderline cruelties to children aside, his rebirth would be a boon for people who enjoy this basketball thing. At twenty-eight years old he should have a few more years left to segue his career from Hong Kong gangster cinema to something more comfortable and comforting. There’s time yet to find a situation that brings more harmony and stability than what the behind the scenes Celtics chatter has crudely brushed for us. Whether it is just the man’s nature, or the strained relationship with his perhaps over-lauded coach, or being asked to do too much whilst too young with too little thanks, or the years alongside brash and deranged competitors, Rondo’s pass-first smile-later bleakness on the court sometimes felt like it bordered on unsustainable. It is appealing to imagine then, as the opening of a new act, to see him lead a gang of wet behind the ears next-generation youngsters (whether in Sacramento, Detroit, New Orleans, or on the Moon) into the win column instead of threatening to kick the shit out of them because they beat him at Connect Four.
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