No more "National TV Rondo"

Last week the Celtics 2013-2014 schedule was released, and along with that came the announcement of which NBA games will be televised nationwide.  Over the past six years of the "New Big 3" era, C's fans have gotten used to regularly seeing our men in green on ABC, ESPN, and TNT.  Now that all three are gone, the networks have come to the conclusion that Boston is no longer must see TV.  This season the Celtics will play just 3 games in the national spotlight (although they do have 3 more on lesser known NBATV), and all of them on ESPN: Friday Dec. 6 against the Nuggets, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett's return to the Garden on Sunday Jan. 26, and the visit to Lakerland on Friday Feb. 21st.

The subplot here is the phenomenon known as "National TV Rondo."  It's well documented that over the past several years the C's point guard has had some of his best games on the biggest stages.  Bill Simmons discussed this in a Grantland column when Rajon Rondo got hurt last February.  A Harvard University student conducted an in depth analysis breaking down the difference in his numbers.  Our own Mike Dyer wrote a piece suggesting Rondo's improved performance in those contests was a result of going up against better competition, not the TV cameras themselves.  Well, this year we will finally get the chance to find out.  I'm betting we're still going to see the triple double machine Rondo in games vs the Heat (and many, many others), even if it's only people in Boston and Miami who will be watching.


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