Captain Rajon Rondo is shooting a LOT more threes than he used to
In Sunday night's loss to Dallas Rajon Rondo went 3-6 from behind the three-point arc. That doesn't seem very noteworthy, except for the fact that Rondo had never once made three 3's in an NBA game before. He's played in a total of 576 contests (regular season and playoffs), and his previous career high was two. The six attempts also tied a career high, which he set two weeks earlier against Brooklyn (going 2-6 on 1/26).
Now here's where it get's really interesting: Before this season Rondo had shot five 3's in a game just once (1/11/10 vs Atlanta), and he'd only even launched as many as four 3's on five previous occasions. And now all of a sudden he's taken six long range attempts twice in 9 games since his return from ACL surgery. To put that in perspective, over the course of his career Rondo has had 17 streaks of five games or more where he didn't even attempt a single three-pointer.
His career average is 0.76 3PT FGA per game (again regular season and playoffs combined), but since coming back he's been putting up 2.7 three-pointers a night. Off the top of my head I see three possibly explanations for this:
1. It's a coincidence. Nine games is a tiny sample size, and the average is thrown off dramatically by those two 6's mixed in there (it drops to 1.7 per game without them). Maybe this is just a weird anomaly.
2. He spent the past year of his rehab working on shooting from beyond the arc, and now he's trying to show that off (I'd feel a lot better about this one if he was making more than 29.2%, although it is significantly greater than his career 3PT rate of 24.5%).
3. Rondo is the Captain, and this is his team now. He's the go to guy, and doesn't have any other veterans to differ to. Nobody else is going to demand the ball from him when it's time to shoot.
My guess is the answer is a combination of all three. Regardless, this is something to keep an eye on going forward.
Follow Mark Vandeusen on twitter @LucidSportsFan
