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Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Thu Apr 09, 2015 10:34 am

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_ ... ajon-rondo
It's May 2011, and Boston is trailing Miami two games to none during its second-round playoff series. On the best of days, Celtics coach Doc Rivers rides Rajon Rondo hard, pushing his stubborn point guard as only a former stubborn point guard can. But this day is different. Doc is more relentless, Rondo more seething. "He was just pushing and he was just pushing and he was just pushing," Garnett recalls. Rondo glances across the room at Shaquille O'Neal and Jermaine O'Neal. "They saw me bubbling," Rondo remembers. "They were trying to calm me down. It was too late."

Without warning, Rondo snatches his water bottle and hurls it, full force, at the television monitor, the one airing the game footage that's being used to critique him. The 50-inch flat-screen, mounted on a cart in the center of the room, shatters. "When he blew the TV up, it was about to go in another direction -- like, the whole thing," Garnett says, his voice rising. Rivers, fed up, gives Garnett an order: "I want Rondo out." Garnett obliges. "He kicked the door off the hinges," Garnett says. "I'll never forget: I had to pick him up and carry him out because it was going like that, and the locker room was suuuper tense. Just super tense." As he's hauling the 6-foot-1, 186-pound point guard, the 6-11 Garnett barks, "Get outside, man, shit," physically carrying Rondo outside the room, then the building. Rondo fumes. "He was just so fucking hot," Garnett says, reliving the moment. "He was hot, yo. When I say he was hot, he was hot."

Standing outside the practice facility, near a road that slopes sharply upward toward the main entrance, Rondo, still boiling, looks at Garnett: "I need a second." Then he takes off, running. Garnett follows, walking behind, letting the 25-year-old burn off his anger. It's an unseasonably chilly day; both men are wearing light practice gear. Garnett -- who considers Rondo a brother and calls him Shorty -- knows Shorty needs some perspective. "Shorty doesn't always listen to everybody," Garnett says. "He'll tell you right off the top, 'I don't want to hear that shit,' or 'Get the hell away from me.' " Today, though, they talk, standing outside for 40 minutes. They talk later that night from their homes too, another half an hour or more on the phone. All of this is in the midst of what will prove to be their last hope for another title run -- Garnett, the Celtics' emotional anchor, burning time managing a petulant hothead.


Still, as much as Rondo wanted to win, he loathed defeat even more, a competitiveness that found an outlet in all things -- great and small -- but most famously in the game Connect Four. Rondo would play on their porch, decimating friends and family deep into the night while his mother worked the graveyard shift at the Philip Morris factory to support her four kids. "If you did win once, he would beat you five or six more times to let you know he was the best," says Dymon, his younger sister. (Rondo's Connect Four prowess has since become legendary and has made for heartwarming-yet-awkward community outreach moments. The day he was traded to Dallas in December, he spent his final hours as a Celtic at Boston Children's Hospital, crushing all comers in the game, repeatedly telling kids, "No mercy.")

Rondo is adept at poker -- computing probabilities, counting cards -- emptying teammates' pockets. He's a whiz at bourré, the famously contentious card game that's fractured many an NBA locker room. Bryan Doo, the Celtics' strength and conditioning coach, calls Rondo the best spades player he's ever played. "And I've played a lot," Doo says.

Rondo maintains a close circle, but during his eight-plus seasons in Boston, he was as close with Doo as anyone. Doo always sought activities to keep Rondo engaged -- golf, tennis, a home run derby with softballs, pool, pingpong, throwing footballs off the wall into a trash can, unorthodox workouts, printing out math equations and racing to solve them first, trying to top each other in Lumosity brain games, designed to improve cognitive abilities. "If you can't keep up with him up here," Doo says, pointing to his head, "he won't listen to you."

Provide him with bad information? "Your credibility is shot," Rondo says. And if he doesn't buy the narrative, even off the floor, he'll bail, he'll disengage, as he does on movies whose storylines stray from logic, even for a moment. His last theater walkout: The Equalizer, starring Denzel Washington. "I didn't understand how he got the cop's number," Rondo says, referencing a certain scene. "It was just too much." He recently watched the movie again to see if he could stomach it. He couldn't.


"He's my friend," says ex-teammate Kendrick Perkins, "but he knows he's too smart. And that's his problem. He knows when he's wrong. It's just getting him to admit it. The problem is, nine times out of 10 he'll be right about what he's saying."

Says a Celtics insider, less charitably, "He always thinks he's the smartest person in the room, even if he isn't."

At shootarounds and practices in Boston, Rivers says, Rondo would become "very irritated" when they had to go over plays again and again, even for veterans. For Rondo, learning plays came as naturally as math. Teammates and coaches would universally claim that Rondo has some sort of photographic memory -- he doesn't deny it -- and former Celtics assistant Tom Thibodeau, now head coach of the Bulls, says that by the time they'd watch game film the morning after, Rondo had already reviewed the footage two or three times. ("He doesn't sleep," Doo says.) The Celtics considered him a pseudo-advance scout, listening and looking for cues from the opponent, then calling out exactly what they were about to do.

Before Rondo's first playoff series against Atlanta in 2008, the Celtics distributed a 100-page book full of the Hawks' plays and statistics. Rondo took it home, then challenged assistant Darren Erman the next morning: "Quiz me on anything." Rondo nailed every question, until Erman tossed a curveball -- a question about something that wasn't in the book. "Fuck you," Rondo said. "That's not in there." Once, when Erman was with the Warriors, his team ran a side out-of-bounds play, called C, that he says they'd run maybe 15 times all season. They called the play. Rondo immediately shouted, "C! Rip screen, rip screen!" Erman and then-Warriors assistant Brian Scalabrine looked at each other, stunned: How in the hell did he know that?

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Thu Apr 09, 2015 10:45 am

That's pretty impressive. To think there are probably lot of other smart black guys who only invest in athletics and don't make it.

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Thu Apr 09, 2015 10:47 am

Insert obligatory quip about spending more time working on his free throws if he never sleeps, here.

It's fascinating how certain attributes can be a gift and a curse at the same time. His competitive nature drives him to strive for greatness, but probably contributes to his hot temper. His intelligence is a fantastic quality, but it breeds arrogance and seems to have resulted in a slight lack of people skills (to say the least). Some of the things that have obviously helped him become a star also likely hold him back from truly being a franchise player.

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Thu Apr 09, 2015 12:58 pm

"He knows all the plays, knows all the actions and can think two, three moves ahead. He's freakishly smart."
-- Lakers guard Kobe Bryant

Endorsement from the greatest player of all time!


Before Rondo's first playoff series against Atlanta in 2008, the Celtics distributed a 100-page book full of the Hawks' plays and statistics.

Really puts in perspective and a reminder how hard it is to be a NBA player, not only do they need to handle the physical demands of being in the NBA but also the mental aspect to prepare for a game, like some people can't even be assed to read a simple article much less read and understand a 100-page book of numbers and geometry.


He aced all his tests, which led Bibby to suspect Rondo of cheating, so the teacher gave Rondo different tests. "He aced those too," Bibby says. To send a message, Bibby still gave Rondo a D. It was, Bibby says, "a pissing contest."

His teacher/coach is a massive dick.

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Fri Apr 10, 2015 1:11 am

Didn't know he was such a smart person. Guess being hot-tempered leaves a wrong impression.

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Sat Apr 11, 2015 3:05 pm

Go to the Lakers rondo.
Scott needs u

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Sat Apr 11, 2015 11:14 pm

Fuck no, Scott wouldn't be able to handle him and he's looking for max money. No thanks.

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Sun Apr 12, 2015 6:35 am

Rondo is one of my favorite players. Really glad he's not on my team, given he's past his prime and you have to make the whole team revolve around him but he's fun.

Embarrassingly, this article made me dig out Connect Four

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Sun Apr 12, 2015 3:20 pm

Jackal wrote:he's looking for max money. No thanks.

Agreed. Just hope not in dallas. The lakers and knicks can though. Rondo is still a big name and kobe's recruiting him, although i think he'll stay with the dallas but w/o the 'max money'. Sadly monte have to decide if he'll go to another team or opt in/resign with the mavs as a 6th man.

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Sun Apr 12, 2015 4:00 pm

If Rondo left a few years ago and join the Lakers, he would've been a great fit, imo.

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Mon Apr 13, 2015 5:12 pm

You want balance between IQ and EQ. Rajon Rondo is still an idiot.

Re: Rajon Rondo: Good at Math, Bad at People

Tue Apr 14, 2015 7:52 am

Kevin wrote:If Rondo left a few years ago and join the Lakers, he would've been a great fit, imo.


If you think about the Howard-Kobe Lakers, he would probably fit even worse than Nash.

Personality and inability to shoot is a big problem in todays NBA for a guard, with Rondo being a perfect example.

And just a couple of years back he was being put in the same sentence as Paul.
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