Getty Rajon Rondo, at right, Lakers
For a team that earned the top seed in the Western Conference and got to face the Trail Blazers in Game 5 of the opening round of the NBA playoffs with a 3-1 lead and with Portland star guard Damian Lillard out with an injury, the Lakers sure are scrambling for depth as they enter the conference semifinals.
The team got dominant performances from LeBron James and Anthony Davis to eliminate Portland with a narrow win but, again, the supporting cast left something to be desired. James and Davis combined for 79 points on 28-for-37 shooting (75.7%). The rest of the team: 20-for-51 (39.2%) with 52 points.
Kyle Kuzma, the oft-discussed third option on the team, is averaging just 10.8 points on 36.0% shooting.
That had many Lakers observers wondering when, exactly, the guy who is supposed to be a playoff savior might be showing up. That would be Rajon Rondo, an NBA champion with 105 playoff games to his credit, who was upgraded to questionable (from doubtful) on the injury report Saturday.
Coach Frank Vogel offered an update on Rondo that was hardly definitive but could open the way for him to be on the floor when the Lakers face either Houston or Oklahoma City. Still, Vogel was mysterious in his assessment of Rondo’s upcoming playoff series.
“Rondo took a positive step and practiced yesterday,” Vogel said before Saturday’s game. “But he is still not going to be active tonight.”
Bask Spasms Followed Thumb Injury for Rondo
Rondo is currently dealing with back spasms dating back to last weekend, just ahead of Game 3 against Portland. With a few days off before the start of the second round of the postseason, Rondo should be healthy for the Lakers’ next foe.
Before the back injury, Rondo had been out after having surgery on his thumb in mid-July. The timeline for the original injury was 6-8 weeks, but Rondo returned to practice nearly two weeks ago and would have been back slightly ahead of schedule—likely only missing the first two games of the series—if not for the back problem.
Rondo’s numbers have not been stellar in this, his first year with the Lakers. He is averaging 7.1 points, his lowest production since his rookie year, and 41.8% shooting. That does not make him an ideal solution to the Lakers’ problems at guard, where Danny Green, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Alex Caruso have struggled to shoot and new additions Dion Waiters and J.R. Smith have combined to play 82 minutes in five games.
Rondo can directly address one Lakers need: additional ballhandling. He did average 5.0 assists in 20.5 minutes this season and is among the team’s top ballhandlers. One big issue for the Lakers has been that when James is not on the floor, the team has no one who can run the offense.
Lakers Have Faced Adversity All Year
The Lakers have managed despite the absence of Rondo, who would have become a more important figure as a fill-in for Avery Bradley, the team’s normal starter and secondary ballhandler. But Bradley opted out of the NBA return in Orlando this summer.
Given what the Lakers have been through, going back to the death of Kobe Bryant in January, through the season hiatus caused by the spread of the novel coronavirus, into the past week’s strife involving player boycotts of three days’ worth of games–much of which was focused around James–and the ups and downs around Rondo are relatively minor.
This team has handled some rough stuff.
“Our group, it’s really about, we have a Ph.D. in handling adversity,” Vogel said. “We have been able to rely on those experiences as a group throughout the year to hopefully take our minds off of what we’re doing because of what we’re doing. This is just the next in a long list of things that has happened to our group this year so I’m confident we’ll be able to get back to where we were.”
They could use some help in getting there, though, and might get some soon.
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