After drafting Marcus Smart and signing Avery Bradley to a four year extension worth around $32 million this offseason, Boston Celtics Basketball of Operations Danny Ainge doesn't look like a man who is prepared to offer Rajon Rondo a max contract. The Celtics are clearly in the process of a rebuild but Ainge apparently has no intentions of trading Rajon Rondo this summer in the free agency period per Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe.
He wrote, "While the Celtics are trying to figure out ways to clear roster space before training camp, moving Rondo is not a high priority. First off, Rondo will be a free agent next summer and fully intends on taking the LeBron James-Carmelo Anthony tour of teams and extending the negotiation process deep into next summer. It is highly unlikely Rondo would sign an extension this season with an interested team, especially the Sacramento Kings. Second, the Celtics don't feel pressed to deal Rondo because they are still trying to determine if he's part of the future and they are intrigued to see him in action a full 18 months following ACL surgery."
Washburn also reported that the Celtics are "anxious" to find out what Rondo will bring to the team after successfully recovering from an ACL surgery that sidelined him for majority of the 2013-14 season. Rondo, meanwhile, seems more than willing to play out the coming season with the Celtics and become a free agent this summer.
But its not hard to see why the Celtics will try to hold on to Rondo, for a season at least, because he is still one of the best point guards in the league if he gets back into full shape after recovering from an ACL injury. But later down the line, Joseph Zucker of Bleacher report believes that something has to give in Boston's back court with Avery Bradley and Marcus Smart expected to demand significant minutes if the Celtics are serious in developing the young, talented guards.
At 29 years old, its difficult to imagine a competitive player like Rondo nearing the end of his prime fitting in a rebuilding team like the Celtics. If Ainge decides to trade Rondo now, the Celtics would certainly get decent value in exchange for the All-Star point guard, particularly to the Kings have who have been chasing him for so long, Matt Moore of CBS Sports wrote. But Moore thinks that the situation may have reached a point where the Celtics are simply not going to move him this offseason. The team wants to wait and see if Rondo will be part of their future and a good time to find out about it is this coming season.
Now the question for Celtics fans and everyone concerned is are the Celtics right in holding on to Rajon Rondo this summer? Or where they better off trading him to the Sacramento Kings or any other team for a young player or future picks?
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