You may have read by now that Chuck and I were sitting in section 20 for last night's game. To give you a sense of where that is in relation to this video, look at the "NBA.com" at the top left of the screen and go up about 15 rows or so.
So from our view of this play, we saw KG give it to Rondo… and Rondo go up. You can see the guy come over to challenge Rondo… which was right in our line of sight… so the next thing we saw was the ball shoot out of nowhere.
For a split second, I thought was a turnover. I mean, it had to be. It was just a scrum of bodies and the ball flew out. It MUST have gone off someone, right?
Nope. The ball settled perfectly in Ray Allen's hands. It was impossible. Chuck and I looked at each other with the "what the hell just happened" look on our faces. Now… seeing this video… I can finally see what Rondo did.
Rondo threw it to where he knew Ray Allen would be. He did not pass it to Ray. He did not spot him last second and give him the ball. He just blindly threw a pass to a spot… and he did it because he KNEW Ray would be sitting there behind the arc waiting for a pass just in case.
That's just flat out insanity.
I was originally going to title this post "Rajon Rondo is a passing savant"… but that implies something other than hard work, repetition, and chemistry with his teammates. And as we found out yesterday, Rondo is a fiend for preparation.
So that pass was simply a case of Rondo knowing everything about where his teammate would be… and finding that spot. The last person I saw that did that on a regular basis was Larry Bird. It's absolutely stunning.
(h/t Celtics Town)
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
