Los Angeles Lakers: How Rajon Rondo fits on the team
By Ethan Temkin
The addition of point guard Rajon Rondo will provide this Los Angeles Lakers roster with high-IQ play, veteran leadership, and playoff/crunch time experience.
When it was announced that the Los Angeles Lakers had signed point guard Rajon Rondo, many Laker fans, including myself were pretty confused. The idea of adding another high-usage playmaker to a Laker’s roster that already had two in LeBron James and Lonzo Ball seemed redundant.
Upon further inspection, however, it became obvious to me that adding a player of Rondo’s caliber will benefit the Lakers in several different ways.
1.) Playmaking
The biggest aspect of adding Rajon Rondo is the fact that it now allows the Lakers to trot out an elite playmaker at practically every junction of a game. Regardless of whether or not Rondo or Lonzo Ball land the starting gig, the other will almost certainly be given the duties of leading the second unit, filled with offensive threats in Kyle Kuzma, Josh Hart (or KCP), Michael Beasley, and Svi Mykhailuk.
Rondo has a knack for finding guys in the right position and has unparalleled vision in the open floor. He may be a little too ball dominant at times, but that’s usually because he’s waiting for the perfect angle to open up.
He’s a classic pass-first point guard who does a great job of distributing the ball to everyone on the floor. This creates a butterfly effect of increased effort, passing, and flow for the rest of the team. Taking a look at his preseason debut, and you can already see the positive effect he’s had in terms of pace and chemistry with this team.
But more importantly, his abilities as a playmaker and a vocal leader will be a major factor in taking some of the offensive load off LeBron James, keeping him fresh for the postseason.
With last year’s Cavaliers team, we saw the effects of having an offense revolving solely around LeBron James. Shot creation outside of LeBron was pretty much nil and the offense stagnated as a result.
The age-old adage of what players to put around LeBron was ‘surround him with shooters’ may have worked when LeBron was in his absolute prime, but even the King can’t do it all on his own. Having Rondo as a secondary playmaker will allow the Lakers to maintain a high level of offense while keeping the load off of LeBron.