His career FT% is 61%. That's over 9 seasons. Now that's bad, but not abysmal like this year. What's more likely... Rondo had a fluke bad year or he completely forgot how to shoot free throws? Rudy Gay shot a Rondo-esque 31% from three for us last year but career numbers say he's a better shooter than that. This year he's up to 36%. It happens.
Also, players who can't shoot threes reliably (Rondo shot 25% for the first 22 games this year and 35% for the last 46 so he's more inconsistent than awful) aren't completely useless off the ball. You have to be more creative than that offensively. You can run Rondo off a screen and get him the ball 15 feet out with his defender out of position. San Antonio does that all the time with Tony Parker. With his vision, he's in good position to set up somebody else from there. He's also one of the few guards who's going to pull down offensive rebounds for you, creating extra possessions. When Cousins isolates in the high or low post, Rondo can cut to the basket and draw a foul or get Cousins an open layup.
If you recall, the offense didn't fall apart with Andre Miller in the game for us and he's even worse as a shooter than Rondo. I think you're underestimating the positive impact that a uniquely gifted playmaker can have.
Andre Miller shoots over than 50% from the field and makes his free throws- and it's much harder to claim a bad FT shooting year, and it's not like it's random- Rondo looked like garbage ever since his ACL injury. he just not the same player. about his % from 3, you could see how teams just leave him aline out there and he can't do nothing, it's actually kind of sad.
Look at Dallas- in the 21 games they started with Chandler-Dirk-Parsons-Ellis-Nelson their record was 14-7 (66.7%), if you only switch from Jameer Nelson (not what you'll call a star PG) to Rondo- you'll get 17-14 (54.8%) that's the drop off for the team.
If you look at lineups you'll see that Rondo's 3 man combinations are all negative, and hold the 15-20 place (last place). 2 man combinations his only one where the team is winning is with Dirk (the 15th best combo) and than he'll hold the last 3.
Dallas is a much worse team when he is on the floor after the trade ORtg difference is- (-1.3) when he is on the floor and +5.2 when he is off it.
Even if you look at Boston before he was traded- the Olynyk-Sullinger-Green-Bradley-Rondo starting lineup record was 3-9 (25%), and the Zeller-Sullinger-Green-Bradley-Rondo one was 5-4 (55.6%) put together that's 38% winning with him.
The starting five of Zeller-Bass-Turner-Bradley-Smart is 18-9 (66.7%).
And actually when you look at his on/off numbers you'll see he made Boston worse- ORtg difference is- (-2.5) with him on the floor and +0.5 when he is off.
IT is +7.5 while he is on the court and (-1.2) when he is off just to give you an example, Rookie Marcus Smart is +3.5 when he is on and -2.9 when he is off.
Right now Rondo is a bad basketball player, even without considering all his other problems like health issues, being a "cancer" for Dallas and admitting to not playing defense for 2 years.
I wouldn't touch him.