Doc Rivers: Boston Celtics are Rajon Rondo’s Team Now


The Boston Celtics (4-5) are struggling out of the gates so far this season, and according to head coach Doc Rivers, everyone must follow point guard Rajon Rondo’s lead. From the Boston Herald: “Unfailingly upbeat, Rivers reminded anyone who would listen that it’s early and that being 4-5 does not mean the season is lost. It does, however, mean something has to change, a point he willingly conceded. The question is can aging warriors like [Kevin] Garnett and Jermaine O’Neal, who have fewer and fewer arrows in their quivers and many battle scars, change all that much? Certainly it is alarming when someone like Brendan Haywood has 11 boards in 29 minutes and O’Neal has three in 22. Rivers spoke to the problem in a sense when he conceded that the team no longer belongs to the Big Three because, well, they’re not as big as they used to be. At least not at the moment. When asked if he felt Rajon Rondo had shouldered too much of the offensive responsibility against Dallas (8-of-16 from the field, 8-of-12 from the line, game-high 24 points), Rivers shook his head in the negative. ‘I think this is his team right now, until everybody else gets it going,’ Rivers said, words that never would have come out of his mouth a year or two ago when the Big Three really was. ‘We need him to be aggressive. We need him to be a scorer and attack. That’s a change, but that’s what it is right now until everybody else gets it going because they are not.’ He was speaking specifically of Garnett, who suddenly looks aged not old, and Paul Pierce, whose injury problems began before the season did. But Rivers could have added O’Neal as well, and if that remains the case, Danny Ainge’s worst nightmare could unfold in front of him — a replay of the painful demise of the original (and only, really) Big Three of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish.”