Photo via aapfarrington on Flickr.
Rajon Rondo’s name seemingly pops up in trade rumors around this time every year. The mercurial, unpredictable floor general, whose name has become as synonymous with the Celtics’ Big Three era as Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, or Paul Pierce, is one of the most polarizing players in the NBA. He’s a singularly gifted passer with an unrivaled knowledge of angles and an excellent defender. But his level of play varies wildly from night to night—at times he’s inspired and at others completely checked out. Trading him doesn’t seem in the Celtics’ best interests, but it wouldn’t be unheard of. It’s also not surprising that of all of the franchise players in the modern NBA, he’s the one who took the most roundabout path to find his way to the only professional team he’s ever known.
The Celtics are debating dealing Rondo for the first time in his career, but he’s already been traded several times. In fact, it took four trades and 13 additional players over the course of two years for him to end up in Boston. Future draft picks are included in trades all the time, and while some of those traded picks pan out (see: the Clippers dumping Baron Davis’ contract on the Cavs in 2011 along with the unprotected first-rounder that became Kyrie Irving), Rondo’s saga is unique. Between the team that originally owned his pick, the two breadth of importance (or lack thereof) of the players he was included in trades with and for, and the two pretty significant deals he was involved in, I’m hard-pressed to think of a set of “future draft considerations” whose memoirs would be more fascinating. Here’s how Rondo became a Celtic in four steps:
August 6, 2004: The Los Angeles Lakers traded Rick Fox, Gary Payton and a 2006 1st round draft pick (Rajon Rondo) to the Boston Celtics for Chucky Atkins, Jumaine Jones and Chris Mihm. (via Basketball Reference)
Some long-standing rivalries between powerhouse teams are more media-created than bought into by the teams themselves. Lakers-Celtics is not one of those, and the fact that they’ve only ever traded with each other three times in history bears that out. The Lakers were coming apart at the seams, with the long-standing feud between Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant reaching a breaking point. A month before this trade, the Lakers shipped Shaq to the Heat and, after a very public flirtation with the Clippers, re-signed Kobe to a seven-year, $136 million contract. Even with the younger of their two superstars locked up, they were coming off a loss to the Pistons in the Finals and, following the retirement of Karl Malone, wanted to get rid of some of their expensive veterans and bring in younger, cheaper talent. So they shipped Payton and Rick Fox to Boston for Jumaine Jones, Chucky Atkins, and Chris Mihm.
Payton did not take the trade well, refusing to report to Boston and venting to the media about his perceived slight by the Lakers organization:
“I’ll quit,” Payton told the newspaper. “I can go on and do something else.
“I wasn’t going to Boston to take a physical. I ain’t going to move my family no more. I can’t take my family to Boston.”
Payton said he didn’t have anything against the Celtics, but that he felt the Lakers had failed to honor their agreement with him when Payton exercised his one-year $5.4 million contract option to continue to play in Los Angeles.
“It’s about respect,” Payton told the Press-Enterprise. “[The Lakers] didn’t respect me. Why should I respect them?
“They used me so they could get other players,” Payton said, adding that “Boston is going to lose out on this. They ain’t going to get nothing.”
via GP respects Celtics, aims fury at Lakers | ESPN.com
Payton’s refusal to cooperate actually resulted in the deal being altered. Marcus Banks, coming off a promising rookie season in Boston, was initially part of the package of players being sent to LA. But because the Celtics were forced to waive Payton’s required physical to push the trade through, they were able to pull Banks out of the trade. Banks played one and a half more seasons for the Celtics, and ultimately started a total of 37 games throughout his eight-season NBA career. That he was the centerpiece the Celtics were able to leverage into not trading because of Payton’s displeasure is pretty amusing in retrospect.
It’s impossible not to imagine what the last seven years would have looked like if the Lakers had held onto that first-round pick and drafted Rondo. For a player that temperamental and undeveloped when he entered the league, it’s no sure thing that he would have become the perennial All-Star and assist machine he is in Boston. Rondo benefitted greatly from the Celtics’ trades in 2007 for KG and Allen, although Kobe could have had a similar impact on him in terms of mentoring and drilling the right work ethic and value system into him. Things worked out for the Lakers in the end, as they always do, because a few years later they stole Pau Gasol from the Grizzlies and won another two straight titles. But they could have still done that if they had kept the Rondo pick. None of the assets they gave up for Gasol were involved in this trade. From 2008 on, the Lakers could have been working with a core of Rondo, Kobe, Gasol, Lamar Odom, and Andrew Bynum.
On the other hand, Rondo and Bynum on the same team would have been utterly spectacular. You couldn’t find a combination of two more talented players whose consistency and effort are more questionable. Kobe might not have backed down from his 2007 trade demands. Bynum already drove him far enough up the wall on his own.
February 24, 2005: The Boston Celtics traded Tom Gugliotta, Gary Payton, Michael Stewart and a 2006 1st round draft pick (Rajon Rondo) to the Atlanta Hawks for Antoine Walker. (via Basketball Reference)
The following season, at the trade deadline, the Celtics shipped Payton out to the Hawks to bring back former All-Star Antoine Walker, less than 18 months after trading him to the Mavericks for no lesser luminaries than Raef LaFrentz and Jiri Welsch. Walker hadn’t left on great terms—despite helping lead the Celtics to the 2002 Eastern Conference Finals, according to this Sports Illustrated article, Danny Ainge questioned the example he was setting for the team’s young players and Walker lashed out at Ainge after being traded. But they brought him back to make a playoff push, and the Rondo pick was was one of the assets they sent out.
A couple of things about this trade feel antiquated and almost nostalgic. For one, Tom Gugliotta was involved. Throughout the mid-1990s and early 2000s, it felt as though he was involved in every other trade that went through. He was just good enough for GMs to consistently pay him upwards of $10 million per year, but not quite good enough for a team to trade for him as a focus. Trading for Gugliotta in 2005 would have been like trading for Tayshaun Prince in 2013.
The other oddity about this trade is that Payton immediately agreed to a buyout with the Hawks and rejoined the Celtics for the rest of the season. Ironic, considering how resistant he was to being traded to the Celtics in the first place. This, of course, is something the new CBA outlaws. The last time it happened was in 2010, when the Cavs traded Zydrunas Ilgauskas to the Wizards for Antawn Jamison and re-signed Big Z after the 30-day waiting period ended. Given how much exception Payton took to being traded from the Lakers, it’s odd that he was so willing to be used to acquire Walker, cut, robbed of 30 days of playing basketball, and then forced to take less money to rejoin the Celtics.
August 19, 2005: The Phoenix Suns traded Joe Johnson to the Atlanta Hawks for Boris Diaw, a 2006 1st round draft pick (Rajon Rondo) and a 2008 1st round draft pick (Robin Lopez). (via Basketball Reference)
That one draft pick ended up getting traded for or with this many disgruntled stars is almost too much of a coincidence. Johnson still held some bitterness towards the Suns over their negotiations on an extension to his rookie contract. Fresh off a trip to the 2005 Western Conference Finals (where they lost to the Spurs in five games despite Amar’e Stoudemire playing out of his mind) he signed a five-year, $70 million offer sheet with the Hawks, he expressed this displeasure publicly and directly asked the Suns not to match the offer. Beyond the money, he didn’t want to be a fourth option on the Suns behind Steve Nash, Shawn Marion, and Stoudemire. The Hawks promised him a starring role on offense, and it was too good to pass up. The Suns got Boris Diaw and two picks in the eventual sign-and-trade, including the Rondo pick. Johnson was rewarded for his ultimatum with six years of second-round-and-out playoff mediocrity in Atlanta and eventual designation as the go-to bad-contract punchline in the NBA.
June 28, 2006: The Phoenix Suns traded Brian Grant and Rajon Rondo to the Boston Celtics for a 2007 1st round draft pick (Rudy Fernandez). (via Basketball Reference)
This trade was nothing more than a salary dump for the notoriously cheap Robert Sarver. Mainly, he got rid of Brian Grant’s contract, also known as the root of all of my basketball-related misery as a preadolescent growing up in Portland.
(You see, Grant was my favorite player on my favorite team of all time, the 1999-00 Blazers that lost to the Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. He was their rebounds-and-energy guy off the bench. Sort of like what J.J. Hickson is now, except good. And with dreads. So basically Kenneth Faried. Anyway, Portland didn’t want to pay him the max deal Miami was offering, which was a smart basketball decision, because in no way was Grant worth close to that kind of money. But 10-year-old me felt differently. I was consoled somewhat by the fact that they were getting Shawn Kemp, whom I knew mainly from NBA Jam and assumed was still a force-of-nature dunking machine, not an overweight, washed-up underachiever with a coke problem. I have strong opinions about these things.)
ANYWAY. Sarver dumped Grant’s contract and saved himself the cost of paying Rondo the rookie scale in return for a first-round pick from the following year, which turned into Rudy Fernandez, whom he sold to the Blazers, because he’s Robert Sarver and hates spending money on the team that he owns to the extent that he’ll give Steve Nash away to the Lakers for a few future draft picks he’ll still probably never use.
It makes sense why the Suns didn’t want Rondo: Nash was still playing at an MVP level at the time, and had a few years left on his contract. But while Rondo became what he became in large part because of the environment he was placed in in Boston, could a young point guard really ask for a better training ground than a Hall of Famer and workout freak like Nash showing him the ropes? Rondo in the 7 Seconds or Less offense? Yes please. It would have either turned into a Chris Paul/Eric Bledsoe situation where the Suns would have had to move Rondo once it became clear he was too good (and expensive) to back up Nash, or they would have traded Nash sooner and built around Rondo.
Somehow, Rondo ended up in Boston. Four trades. 13 players. Boston owned the pick twice, and it came from their archrival. He was present, in pick form, in seemingly every trade involving a dissatisfied star from 2004 to 2006, and now he himself occupies the gray area between franchise player and trade bait. But I like the way it worked out.