Rajon Rondo’s Offensive Rebound | NBA Playbook

Rajon Rondo’s Offensive Rebound

Rajon Rondo’s offensive rebound late in the fourth quarter with the Celtics up by ten points was a pretty big play.  Instead of getting a defensive rebound and having the chance to cut the lead down into single digits, the Lakers were facing a 12 point lead with the Boston crowd going nuts.  While this was a great individual effort by Rondo, the Lakers (more specifically Lamar Odom) are responsible for this play:

The Boston Celtics get the ball in Paul Pierce’s hands so he can initiate the offense.  Once he gets the ball, the Celtics run a pick and pop with Ray Allen as the screener.

Because Derek Fisher can’t leave Ray Allen to hedge, Paul Pierce is able to get himself into the lane.  This forces Kobe Bryant to leave his man (Rajon Rondo) and help on the driving Pierce.

This help by Kobe sets off a series of rotations from the Lakers as the ball gets kicked out to the wing.  As this is taking place, Rajon Rondo fades to the wing to clear the lane.

Eventually the ball gets swung back around to Paul Pierce on the wing.  The Lakers start the process of trying to recover to everyone, but nobody picks up Rajon Rondo.  At first thought Kobe Bryant seems at fault, but if you look at the above image, Lamar Odom is the man closest to Rondo and he seems to be responsible for him.

As the shot is in the air, Kobe boxes out Ray Allen so if there was any doubt of who was responsible for ray Allen and who was responsible for Rajon Rondo, that should have settled it.  Instead of finding Rondo and boxing him out, Lamar Odom ball watches.

As the ball comes off the rim, Rajon Rondo rises up and tips it home.  Lamar Odom’s mistake here is not boxing out and just trying to jump for the basketball.  If Odom gets a body on Rondo, there is no way that Rajon would be able to get a jump like this.  Here is the play in real time, notice how nobody picks up Rondo as the shot goes up.

15
Jun 2010
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POSTED IN 2010 Playoffs 4th Quarters Boston Celtics LA Lakers Rebounding
DISCUSSION 6 Comments
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  • http://billsweetreport.com Bill Sweet

    Here it is with some piano just for poops and grins:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDhnFR7qu9Q

  • james

    huge play. isn’t it as much kobe’s fault for just roaming on defense and not sticking to rondo who was his assignment? although once he has left him it does appear that odom picks him up so its partly his fault also.

  • GhostofRed

    Love these breakdowns. Nice job.

  • Robert Myers

    Thanks for the understandable and detailed explanation. It doesn’t seem to occur to sportswriters on basketball that most of us never even played basketball on a junior varsity squad. One of the reasons I prefer baseball is that I can usually understand the explanations of the announcers. Basketball is too fast-paced to do that real time, but that’s no reason why an explanation of interesting plays (including the run up to it and attention to people off the ball) never seems to be offered.

  • Aleks

    Kobe had no choice, he had to leave Rondo, and the first rotation is flawless, as Artest takes over Rondo. Later, when the Lakers recover, Odom clearly has to guard Rondo, as his original assignment (Perkins) is far away from the basket and not in rebounding position. But the second problem here is Ron Artest overplaying Pierce at the 3pt line with around 3sec left on the shot clock. Just staying in front of Pierce would have forced a very hard shot that might not have even hit the rim.

  • Jaffe

    the whole play is on odom, on that first rotation if hes instructed to help when kendrick perkins goes to the three point line, he does a really poor job of getting back, the kobe- artest switch on the help is flawless, artest covers kobes man and kobe now has artests man. Now odoms problem is that hes watching the ball handler and has no idea what should occur next. Fisher and bryant help on allens drive, what should happen now is odom and artest are guarding one person (rondo), one of them should have either run out @ perkins or guarded pierce before he runs back out, both jump out at rondo for a sec, fisher now thinks he has to guard perkins. so they have 3 guys (artest, odom, fisher) guarding two non shooters in rondo and perkins, artest realises his mistake as pierce gets the ball and rushes out to him, disagree with the above comment, in that artest DID play it right, there was only 2-3 seconds on the clock he has to shoot, so he rushed out and forced him to rush an open 3, kobe has followed allen around, and odom well he still has no idea who he is marking