Riders of Rajon

Don't hate Rajon Rondo.

After handling the Chicago Bulls in game seven, the Celtics are moving on to the second round of the NBA playoffs with an interesting series against the beleaguered Orlando Magic. And I'm starting to feel the Rondo-hate ride start to roll in.

During the epic Bulls series, which will go down in history as the best first-round playoff series that didn't involve a team making the finals that year, I got plenty of texts from my friends about how they didn't like Rondo.

And Rondo's foul on Brad Miller in Game 5 of the series brought an outpouring of "that should of been a flagerant!" and then when the guy shoved Kirk Hinrich into the scorers table... people we're about to put him in same category as the Cobra Kai Dojo in "Karate Kid."

All we were missing was Doc Rivers telling Rondo to "Sweep the leg!"

You know what? I love it. I love that Rondo is playing physical basketball. It's certainly been effective hasn't it?

And I can't believe I had to do this, but a week ago I actually had to defend these points... (a) Rondo is among the better point guards in the league and (b) he would start on other NBA teams.

I could go into detail about why Rondo is worth it but there's already enough people writing this point about Rondo. For all you haters out there, take off your college basketball glasses (they're not in season anymore) and understand that this guy brings so much to his position it's not even funny. He can run the offense to a tee, obviously play defense (proor Bwad Miwller's Bwusted Lwip), create his own shots and rebound. And his top speed is somewhere around the speed limit in the state of Montana. It's insane. 

With exceptions being  in San Antonio, Phoenix and New Orleans, every NBA team would absolutely love having a guy as multi-faceted as Rondo on their team.