Rajon Rondo Says He Might Coach in the NBA When He Retires

Having learned a ton from Doc Rivers, Rajon Rondo seems to have picked up the coaching bug. The Boston Celtics’ star point guard still doesn’t know when he’ll play again, but coaching may someday be in his future. Per the Boston Herald: “The Bulls’ Derrick Rose, who is only now coming back from 2012 ACL surgery, has been the anti-Adrian Peterson, who defied odds in his own ACL comeback to win the NFL MVP award last year with the Vikings. But Rondo has complete appreciation for Rose’s deliberate approach, and how it mirrors his own. ‘I understand, and he got a lot of heat for a while because he didn’t come back,’ Rondo said. ‘Anybody who has an ACL injury understands. OK, Adrian Peterson came back in six months. Why did he come back in six months and others in eight months or 10 months? Everybody is different. Things can happen so differently with the knee. You can have swelling, you can have cartilage damage. So many things can happen that can cause a setback. Everybody is different. You can’t compare football to basketball. I talked to a lot of guys — Perk (Kendrick Perkins), (Tony Allen), I talked to (Wes) Welker to see what they went through. You try to come back quick because you’re itching for it. I’m itching because I’m so competitive.’ […] ‘Obviously, he came back and had an MVP season,’ Rondo said of Peterson. ‘That’s what I want to have when I come back. I don’t want to come back and be mediocre. I don’t want to have any excuses. I want to be ready to go. I don’t want to have to blame anything on my knee.’ Nor does he want to obsess, or depress himself, over the trade that sent Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn, or coach Doc Rivers’ departure for the Clippers. Though he and Rivers had stormy moments, Rondo turned a bit sentimental. ‘I still catch myself laughing at some of the things he’s told certain guys, and now I find myself quoting some of the things that Doc has said to individual guys,’ Rondo said. ‘I’ve learned a lot from Doc. I’ve tried to study his ways as far as coaching, because I might want to coach someday myself.'”