The NBA salary cap gets a ton of attention, but hardly anyone ever discusses the salary floor.
Rajon Rondo is a rare “salary floor casualty,” just like you have your traditional “salary cap casualties.”
In an organization that’s done a lot of “he brought in his guy” kind of maneuvers, Rajon Rondo (who will make $14,000,000 this season in year one of his two-year, $29 million contract) is not really anyone’s guy.
He’s just a well paid veteran who was signed to make sure the Chicago Bulls didn’t fall below the salary floor.
He was a panic buy, as the point guard was brought in before the Bulls knew they really could land expensive superstar Dwyane Wade (2016-17 salary $23,230,000), and meet their payroll requirements.
As it stands today, the Bulls don’t need to worry about over or under-spending, and if they want to jettison Rondo, it would only cost them just $3 million to buy out the remainder of his contract and do so.
Hopefully they can find a trading partner instead and get something in return for a guy who is the very definition of addition by subtraction. Cleveland have reportedly expressed interest in acquiring Rondo to back-up to Kyrie Irving.
Mario Chalmers has been mentioned as another target. Now while we believe Rondo and the Bulls should part ways, and that would make Chicago much better off, the embattled guard does still have many positive attributes. He may not have a ton of trade value right now, but he can still ball, and he boasts an impressive resume. Rondo might believe he’s better than being a back-up somewhere, and he certainly has plenty of reason to think so.
He led the NBA in assists last year, and he’s still pretty much the same player. He got off to an impressive start in Chicago and put up a triple double against the Cavs, and obviously that impressed the champs quite a bit.
Of course, his personality just seems to make sure he burns bridges everywhere that he goes.
However, he’s completely frozen out now and this situation will only get worse. Rajon Rondo couldn’t coexist wth Rick Carlisle or Doc Rivers, and so it seems he can’t make it work here in Chicago either. About a quarter of the way into the season, the four-time All-Star got suspended for one game due to his throwing a towel at a Bulls assistant coach.
Now the Bulls should throw in the towel on this summer acquisition.
They are 3-1 since Rondo got banished to the bench, including a very impressive, gutsy win over current #2 seed Toronto, in which they fought all the way back from a 19 point deficit. We’re seeing less is more sans Rondo in action already (albeit it’s a very small sample size).
Maybe you can feel for the guy, at least a little bit. It’s a very tough situation for him, much like it is for the team. You can hear a random, stray “free Rondo” yell here and there at Bulls home games these days.
Michael Carter-Williams is the starting point guard right now, with Executive Vice-President John Paxson’s guy, fellow Notre Dame alum Jerian Grant the back-up. Rajon Rondo is nowhere even remotely on the map right now.
Which is odd considering that he’s the very same exact guy who labeled the identity of this team.
“The main thing is that we have three alphas. There will be three alphas on the team,” Rondo said the day that he was signed. He was referring to himself, Jimmy Butler and Dwyane Wade.
“Just trying to mesh together and try to make sure we are doing the best thing for the team.”
If you’ve rarely, or perhaps never heard the term three alphas before it’s because it’s a paradoxical, almost oxymoronic idea. You can only have one alpha male on a team, or alpha dog in a pack, by the very definition of the term.
Of course, Rondo then clarified his statements, and he seemed to now agree with what we just said above.
“Obviously it’s Jimmy’s team,” he responded.
“Jimmy’s the youngest, he’s the engine here. It’ll be Jimmy, Wade, and then it will be a pecking order.”
https://soundcloud.com/p-m-banks/rajon-rondo-meets-chicago-bulls-media
No matter how you label it, or what words you do to describe the situation, we all knew back in the summer that this arrangement wasn’t going to work out. It was extremely predictable and everyone who was paying attention knew that Rajon Rondo wasn’t really a good fit here, and certainly not with the roster re-tooling.
It’s just like The Simpsons fictional depiction of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who laments:
“I am afraid we have no choice but to abandon communism. C’mon, we all knew this crazy mumbo jumbo wouldn’t fly.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud