At times last season, Rajon Rondo was the best point guard in the league, a threat to break the NBA single-season record for assists, a brooding disappointment whose best friend’s trade may or may not have been partially to blame, a nightly triple-double who destroyed the Knicks, and the one-armed criminal from The Fugitive, if the one-armed criminal from The Fugitive played valiantly in a playoff basketball series after losing movement in his arm. Rondo was alternately brilliant and disinterested, wonderfully creative and oddly hesitant, the piece that drove the Celtics and the piece that held them back.

As the careers of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen fade to black, the Celtics will become Rondo’s team, more so than they already are. Though Celtics fans resented it when Mike D’Antoni remarked, “I’d like to see him play in Minnesota and see how he does,” there’s still an unknown factor surrounding all of Rondo’s accomplishments to date. He undoubtedly benefits from playing with a number of sure-fire Hall of Famers — their threat gives him space to create, their high-percentage shooting boosts his assist totals, their mere presence loans camouflage to the nights when Rondo just doesn’t show up. With that in mind, we wonder how Rondo will evolve when the Big Three aren’t there as his crutch, when the team is his, when he is flanked by players who need him to lead nightly rather than just whenever he feels like it, when his occasional lapses in effort and focus are no longer hidden by the play of his fellow starters.

Really, the Celtics needed Rondo to lead them nightly last season. You cannot say his second-half struggles caused the team’s demise because there were far too many debilitating factors — among them a bench that couldn’t hold 15-point leads, a midseason trade that never panned out, and two centers who could barely walk never mind run — but Rondo became a decidedly worse player in the second half of the season, and that was precisely when the Celtics began to resemble the old, slowed team they spent the first half pretending not to be. When the Celtics were at their best last season, Rondo was setting the NBA world ablaze with nightly assist totals you couldn’t count with two hands. He was flitting in and out of passing lanes, snatching rebounds with either hand, and leading his teammates, even his more celebrated ones, both by example and with his words. The Celtics were Rondo’s team, but in the end, whether because of injuries, heartache or both, he could not sustain his record pace.

When Rondo did not deliver — in the Heat series, mostly because of his arm, and in the second half of the season, mostly for reasons we’re unsure of — the Celtics fell. The correlation between Rondo’s play and Boston’s play was clearly evident — before the All-Star break, Rondo averaged 10.9 points and 12.2 assists on 50.2% shooting while the Celtics compiled a 40-14 record. After the All-Star break, Rondo’s averages fell to 10.2 points and 9.4 assists on 43.1% shooting and the Celtics limped to a 16-12 finish.

But the Big Three were still there to serve as a parachute that made the fall less devastating. What will happen in 2014 if Rondo starts to mail in games? What will happen if the Celtics fail to reload, Rondo is their only star, and he still fails to deliver consistently? What happens if he needs to take on a bigger scoring role? Could he do that? Is he capable of adjusting to life beyond the Big Three? Does he need them?

It’s safe to say that Rajon Rondo will still succeed when the Big Three retire. With his speed, basketball IQ, creativity and grit, he’s clearly a talent capable of surviving without them. But to what extent will he thrive? To what extent will he miss his running mates? To what extent will Rondo’s game change when Ray Allen isn’t spotted up on the perimeter, Kevin Garnett isn’t running the pick-and-pop, and Paul Pierce isn’t lined up on the wing, a threat to score from anywhere? Will losing the Big Three hold Rondo back, or will losing them force him to focus more on his own game, without any more parachutes to decelerate his falls?

There are holes to Rondo’s game, and his biggest flaw remains as evident as the sun on a cloudless day. His broken jumper allows teams to defend him unconventionally — especially in a playoff series, when coaches are afforded more time to leverage game plans, good defensive teams can use Rondo’s horrific outside shooting to their advantage. Yes, Rondo’s playoff stats are normally comfortably above his regular season averages. But as the rounds progress and the Celtics face stiffer competition, Rondo shoots poorer percentages and his teammates get fewer open looks as opponents seek to exploit Rondo’s reluctance to shoot.

The lack of any semblance of a jumper limits Rondo’s progression. Without serious improvements to his shooting, Rondo could not, for example, become Derrick Rose, a point guard who is relied on to score, nor could Rondo become Chris Paul, who has become a deadly shooter in the past few seasons.  He could not become Steve Nash, one of the greatest shooters in NBA history, or John Stockton, who knocked down jumpers at an impressive rate.

No, Rajon Rondo is Rajon Rondo, not to be confused with anyone else, a fiercely unique player whose closest comparison is probably a young Ason Kidd (before he learned a “J”), a gifted defender who gambles too often, an aggressive rebounder in a 6’1 frame, a young point guard who has improved drastically each season, the weak link of the 2008 title team, the leader of a current (quasi-) contender, an emotional, surly, fun-loving, head-strong character who loves the child’s game Connect Four and has not yet had the chance to prove himself without the Big Three by his side. The time for that proof will inevitably come, and when it does Rondo will surely succeed, but to what extent we are not yet certain.

Without Red Auerbach, the Boston Celtics would not have become the NBA’s winningest franchise. He drafted Bill Russell. Selected Larry Bird a year before Bird finished college. Traded for Robert Parish and Kevin McHale. Coached the Celtics to nine championships, then won seven more as general manager and team president.

On what would have been Auerbach’s 94th birthday, I include an excerpt from Bill Russell’s book Red and Me: My Coach, My Lifelong Friend to remind you: sometimes, the genius is in fine print.

To set the stage: The year is 1956. The Celtics are thirsty for a big man and Auerbach is desperate to draft Russell, but the Celtics only have the 7th pick. Ed Macauley’s son is sick and Macauley has requested a trade closer to his St. Louis home; Red also wants to use the draft to send Macauley to the St. Louis Hawks. The St. Hawks hold the 2nd pick, so Red needs to devise a plan to A) trade Macauley to St. Louis, B) bring the Hawks’ 2nd pick to Boston, and C) persuade the Rochester Royals, owners of the 1st pick, not to select Russell.

“First, he called Hawks owner Ben Kerner, a man he’d once coached for and despised. If he could maneuver Kerner off [Russell], that would suit Red just fine. So he offered up Macauley, his best shooter, and the Celtics’ seventh pick in the draft in return for St. Louis’s rights to pick second. But Ben Kerner knew he had Red over a barrel. So he demanded more. He wanted to throw in Cliff Hagan, a promising young forward to Kentucky. At that juncture, Celtics owner Walter Brown told Red, ‘You can’t trade Ed Macauley! He’s our best player!’ But then Red had Ed Macauley tell Walter personally, ‘I want you to trade me to St. Louis. You’d be doing me a favor, because then I can take care of my son and still play pro ball.’ That was enough for Walter; he wore his empathy on his sleeve anyway.

“St. Louis was satisfied. Now for the coup de grace: the Rochester Royals. They had first pick, so what could Red possibly do to keep them from saying, ‘Rochester selects Bill Russell’? The Royals already had Maurice Stokes, a great young center who was leading the league in rebounds, so Red figured they didn’t need another big center like me. So he persuaded Walter Brown to call Rochester owner Les Harrison with an unusual proposition. Walter said, ‘Listen, Les. I’m the president of the Ice Capades. If you lay off Russell at Number one, just pick the date and I’ll throw the Ice Capades in your building for two weeks.’ This was Red’s almost compulsively innovative genius working overtime. He knew that in the off-season back then, a lot of those big arenas sat empty. Having the Ice Capades in your building for two weeks was like having the Harlem Globetrotters: guaranteed sellouts every night—and you’ve made a profit for the year! Of course, Harrison bit. He was a businessman, and for him, this was good business.”

And with that, the Celtics secured the draft rights to Bill Russell, set the foundation for the team’s first 11 championships, and marked Red Auerbach as one hombre you don’t want to negotiate with. Even when you win against Red — I’m sure the Ice Capades made Les Harrison a bundle of cash — you lose.

Happy birthday, Red. Smoke a stogey for me.

Two days after reports that Kendrick Perkins routinely criticized teammate Russell Westbrook during the past season, reports from Oklahoma City described a mini training camp the Thunder held last week at the University of Texas. Two-thirds of the Thunder participated in the workouts, ten players. Nazr Mohammed called their games “the best pickup games in America,” and the Thunder used what could have been a wasted summer to step a little closer to an NBA championship.

All of which begs the question: should fans be concerned that the Boston Celtics haven’t met once this offseason?

Many teams have organized offseason workouts. Mike Conley brought the Grizzlies together. Amare Stoudemire rallied the Knicks. Durant rounded up the Thunder. But the Celtics have yet to gather in the same area.

Last week Kevin Garnett suggested he would plan a Celtics get-together soon, but his details were vague and the plan hardly seemed like one of his priorities. He said, “I’m going actually to the East Coast sometime soon and I am actually going to try to get everybody together just to be in the same area.” But when and where were not mentioned, and Garnett even admitted the workout likely would not consist of more than four or five players.

The problems are in geography and numbers. Garnett and Pierce live in California, and Pierce spent time barnstorming in China. Jermaine O’Neal and Avery Bradley work out in Las Vegas. Ray Allen was most recently spotted in Connecticut. E’Twaun Moore is playing professionally in Italy. JaJuan Johnson, based on his tweets, spends most of his time in Indiana. Rajon Rondo is working out at the University of Kentucky, sometimes with Lebron James. Glen Davis, Delonte West and Jeff Green aren’t officially Celtics. Neither are Nenad Krstic, Carlos Arroyo, Von Wafer, Sasha Pavlovic or Troy Murphy — Krstic left to Russia, Carlos Arrroyo competed with the Puerto Rican National Team this summer, and Wafer, Pavlovic and Murphy presumably are still picking splinters from their rumps and having nightmares of the end of Boston’s bench.

With only seven players under contract (eight if you include E’Twaun Moore, a second-round pick who does not have a guaranteed contract), the Celtics could not possibly host a ten-man mini training camp like the Thunder did. But meeting at least a few times, if only so JaJuan Johnson could have heard Kevin Garnett’s advice or Avery Bradley could have asked Rajon Rondo some questions about running a team, would have been beneficial. Instead, the Celtics — led by so many veterans, who we assumed would remain unfazed by the lockout, if only because the main Celtics already experienced one in 1998 and should have learned from it — have allowed the summer to disconnect them and leave them scattered across the country, working out (or not working out, you never know) mostly on their own.

It’s nothing to worry about, at least not yet, as the Celtics still have plentiful experience together and don’t necessarily need extra reps like the young Thunder or Grizzlies do. But you have to admit — you would have preferred that the Celtics spend at least a portion of this summer together as a team, working out, bonding, and pulling a successful season just a little bit closer to their embrace.

At some point last season — maybe it was when he returned from injury, or when he started protecting the basket like it was his only daughter, or when I learned he swatted shots and grabbed rebounds all with a broken wrist — Jermaine O’Neal won his way into my heart. His body wasn’t built for this anymore, it wasn’t built for 82 game schedules and back-to-back games and bumping and grinding in the low post, but O’Neal proved himself to be tough, a winner, a player who would give until his body wouldn’t let him give anymore.

The body is still the issue, and  it could keep him from playing further than this next season. In an interview with CSNNE, O’Neal admitted he will likely retire after the 2011-’12 season. (CSNNE)

Jermaine O’Neal told CSNNE.com that, barring an unexpected change of heart, which he says is unlikely, this will be his last season. …

“I’m going into my 16th year, so I know my time is near,” O’Neal said. “I know someday the ball is going to go flat; you have to plan for life after basketball and that’s what I have been doing.” …

“I have a 5-year-old son and a 12-year-old girl,” he said. “They want to spend a lot of time with Daddy. At this point in my career, it doesn’t make sense to go overseas and play for half-a-season. I want to be able to be ready and be fully prepared mentally and physically for what may be my last season.” …

“You never say never, but like I said earlier, my kids are getting older,” he said. “The only thing left that I want to do in this league is win a championship. That’s why I came to Boston last year, because I felt this was the best place for me to do that: Win a championship.”

O’Neal is not the first Celtic to be linked to possible retirement — Kevin Garnett said he can see the end of his career approaching, Ray Allen, 36 years old though aging quite slowly, likely won’t be around for too much longer, and Paul Pierce, though younger than Garnett and Allen, is already on the down slope of his Hall of Fame career. There will be an exodus of retirements within the next handful of years, and the Celtics will transform into the unrecognizable, a team devoid of the Big Three and reliant on Rajon Rondo — and hopefully another All-Star or two — to light the path into the future.

After admitting his plan to retire, O’Neal noted that only one goal remains unaccomplished on his career checklist: winning an NBA championship.

“For me now, it’s not about scoring or statistics,” O’Neal said. “I’ve proven that I can score in this league, do a lot of good things. For me now, it’s all about winning, being part of a winner. That’s my motivation.”

Perhaps he’s delusional to consider the Celtics championship contenders. They were smacked around by the Heat last season, they have just seven players on a roster that’s already over the salary cap, eight if you count E’Twaun Moore, whose contract is not guaranteed, and most significantly, the core that led Boston back to relevance, the core that won one championship and came minutes from another, is one year older. The NBA landscape is passing the Big Three Boston Celtics by; if they did not pass the Eastern Conference torch to the Miami Heat last season, Lebron James ripped it from their wrinkly fingers and battered them over the head with it.

But there’s always hope. What if Kevin Garnett returns just as mobile as he was last season? What if Ray Allen continues to stiff-arm the aging process? What if Paul Pierce holds his slow decline to a crawl? What if the Celtics re-sign Delonte West, fill out the rest of their bench with shooters, rebounders and knowledgeable defenders, and somehow, improbably, miraculously, arrive at the playoffs without a list of injuries longer than this column?

If everything goes right, if Danny Ainge makes the right moves, if the Big Three remain near the top of their games, if Jermaine O’Neal and the rest of his teammates somehow coax health out of bodies that aren’t necessarily built for this anymore, this 82 games of grinding and bumping and bruising and running and jumping, then the Celtics have a shot at winning a championship. Then O’Neal could retire on top, and the slew of retirements to follow in the coming years would be less painful.

If only everything goes right.

I miss Nenad Krstic.

Not necessarily anything about Krstic in particular, although his offensive game sometimes proved stimulating, his hairline was ever enjoyable, and the nickname Curly cracked me up every time. I just miss being able to watch basketball, to judge new players, to analyze and sometimes over-analyze players that have been with the Celtics for years, and others that have been with the Celtics for weeks. I miss that Krstic’s shots floated gently to the rim, and yes, I even miss that his box-outs were somehow more gentle than that. I miss that he once scored 20 points and nine rebounds yet I still abused him in the game recap because his help defense (if you could call it that) contributed to DeAndre Jordan’s 27,839 dunks (estimation). I miss the stages of rooting for Krstic last season:

1) ugh, he’ll never be Perk

2) awesome, he’s not Perk!

3) damn it, he’s not Perk

4) awesome, he’s not Glen Davis!

5) but still, he’s not Perk

The NBA is hibernating, who knows when it will wake up, and for now I’m stuck missing Nenad Krstic, even though I never loved (or even really liked) his game in the first place. The lockout has my emotions spinning like Barry Zito’s curveball in 2002, dancing like an in-his-prime Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball (can somebody buy that man a win?), and going up and down like Steve Nash’s handle. Optimism has leaked out of the NBA’s latest round of meetings,  but still, powerful agent Bill Duffy said, “It seems like the sides are really far apart.”

If you follow me on Twitter, you saw me ask the question, “If the NBA and its players are actually optimistic about the lockout, um, then why are players still signing overseas?” The conversation eventually turned to J.R. Smith, who is reportedly close to signing a $3 million deal to play in China, where his contract will not include a lockout clause. If you believe in the lockout optimism, Smith’s deal is head-scratching: even if he believed signing in China would increase his endorsement potential, why would Smith sign for $3 million in China when his market value in the NBA is presumably higher, possibly even much higher?

Kelly Dwyer noted the possibility that Smith may need money immediately to cover his substantial bills, and that’s entirely possible. But there’s also this: an escrow check totaling approximately $480,000 will soon come in Smith’s mail. If the NBA season were to start on time, it would start next month. That $480,000 is not significantly less than Smith’s monthly pay last season, $563, 154.25 (his yearly contract divided by twelve) — if Smith believed the season were going to start on time, his escrow check should be enough to tide him over. Maybe Smith is just keeping his options open by participating in contract dialogue with the Chinese Basketball Association. Maybe he does need money, he needs a sure thing, and the lockout talks sound optimistic but he just can’t chance it. Or maybe J.R. Smith and his agent, who presumably know more about the labor talks than I do, are afraid the NBA season won’t start on time.

That possibility, no matter how strong, freaks me out. Hell, I already miss Nenad Krstic.

If the NBA misses a significant amount of games, the Celtics stand to be among the biggest losers. A lost season could end the Big Three era, and a shortened season could prove nearly as harmful — a shortened season would result in more back-to-back games, which would result in broken down veteran bodies, which would result in extra losses and injuries and the lack of homecourt advantage in the playoffs. The Celtics were a very good team last year, but they were undressed by Miami in the second round. Best-case scenario in 2011-12, the Celtics use their limited (read: zero) cap space to reload their bench, the new bench alleviates pressure from the Big Three, the Fantastic Four all enter the playoffs healthy, Rajon Rondo takes the next step toward becoming consistently great, and Jermaine O’Neal and Big Man X provide an inside presence the broken-down O’Neal duo couldn’t last season. But the 2011-12 Celtics are like a Jenga tower. The Celtics need every block in the right spot to remain contenders next season. If a lockout causes any harm at all, if one block falls out of place, the Jenga tower will collapse and the Celtics will peter of out the playoffs too early.

Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce are all noted professionals with impressive work ethics, but time keeps ticking into the future, and the 1999 NBA lockout hit veterans with a haymaker that some couldn’t survive. Vin Baker was third-team All-NBA the year before the lockout, an overweight alcoholic when the NBA returned. Shawn Kemp was a walking highlight film the year before the lockout, a cautionary tale after it. The Big Three aren’t likely to return with a beer belly or a substance abuse problem, but they don’t need to: if the lockout even causes one of the Big Three to lose a single step, the Jenga tower could come to a swift crash and the Big Three Era could evaporate into the NBA annals with barely a whisper.

For now, we don’t know when the NBA will rise from its deep sleep. We don’t know when we’ll get another glimpse of Garnett’s volcanic eyes, Pierce’s calculated precision, Ray’s baby powder jump shot, or Rondo’s one-step-ahead-of-you creativity.

All we know is uncertainty. We hear recent optimism, but it’s sprinkled with pessimism, and when J.R. Smith signs a deal in China, we wonder whether that’s more a sign about the NBA lockout or Smith’s bank account.

And meanwhile, I miss Nenad Krstic. Make it end.

Every indication we have says that Wyc Grousbeck plays to win. He pays the luxury tax every season, opened his pockets to retain both Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, and generally makes every effort to field the winningest team possible. Including luxury tax last season, Celtics player salaries totaled $82 million, and Grousbeck is the man signing those checks.

Yet there have been grumblings that Grousbeck is among the hard-lining owners willing to lose the entire season if that’s what it takes to re-work the Collective Bargaining Agreement in the owners’ favor. Yahoo’s Kelly Dwyer revisited those claims today.

“With Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce all on the downside (if, in Pierce’s case, just barely) of brilliant careers, why would the owner of the most ‘WIN NOW!’ of the win-now teams want to lose the 2011-12 season?” Dwyer asks. “Or why would he want a truncated season in its place, when the 50-game sprint during the post-lockout 1999 run destroyed veteran teams?”

Because he’s a smart business-man, Dwyer assserts.

“Grousbeck knows what’s good for his bottom line,” Dwyer writes. “And if we can get cynical and Donald Sterling-y with things, he’s really under no obligation beyond that.”

Judging in a strictly Donald Sterling-y fashion, there really is no other obligation. Grousbeck is free to suck the players dry of as much money as he can manage, and he is free to suggest that the owners lengthen the lockout as long as necessary to achieve the desired concessions from the players. That’s his right, and if you consider a business owner a blood-sucking leech whose only obligation is making money for himself, that’s precisely the way Grousbeck should act.

But I’d like to think there’s a lot more to owning a sports franchise than the thirst for as much money as possible. When an individual buys a sports franchise, he should enter the purchase with the intent to field a winning product. I don’t say that because I’m an eternal optimist who thinks all business owners operate with impeccable morals. But mega-millionaires like Grousbeck and other sports owners could afford any business, so if they want to penny-pinch, why choose sports, where a losing product affects more people and affects those people more strongly?

For example: If Grousbeck bought Levi jeans and put out a shitty product, sure, Levi jeans fans would be upset that their favorite jeans suddenly sucked. But those same fans would soon forget about Levi entirely and move onto Guess jeans, or whatever jeans the kids are wearing these days, because the brand loyalty to Levi cannot survive such a shitty product. Meanwhile, the Chicago Cubs have sucked for the last century. Yet even in Massachusetts, I know Cubs fans who suffer through season after season. Rooting for a sports team is a far deeper bond than choosing a pair of pants.

I’m not suggesting that Grousbeck is a penny-pincher, nor does he put out a shitty product. He has run the Celtics the right way since buying them. He turned my favorite team into a champion and he has kept them a contender ever since, paying well into the luxury tax every season in order to field a winner. He has earned some good faith.

But if he is really willing to miss the entire season in order to get the best deal — and maybe we shouldn’t even be having this conversation now that the NBA lockout is looking at least slightly more optimistic, two months after the report of Grousbeck’s hard stance — then Grousbeck should be on every Celtics fan’s shit list.

Grousbeck was worth a reported $360 million in 2005 and is now an owner of the reportedly-worth-$452 million Boston Celtics. Even in a down economy with a collective bargaining agreement that will undoubtedly improve for the owners, the Celtics made millions of dollars last season, and that’s not including any other local businesses Grousbeck owns that flourish due to the Celtics presence in Boston — common benefits NBA owners receive from their franchises but don’t have to report in the accounting books, benefits that Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs calls “interconnected wealth-generating mechanisms.” And after the season, the Celtics are close to signing (or have already signed?) a deal with Comcast that will reportedly afford them a 20% equity stake in Comcast and a “healthy increase” in the annual rights fee Comcast pays to telecast games (the Celtics currently receive between $15 million and $20 million per year).

Grousbeck is millions and millions of dollars away from starving for money and the Celtics are doing well financially, yet Grousbeck is reportedly willing to sacrifice what could be the final year of the Big Three — or at least what will assuredly be their last chance to contend, if their window hasn’t already closed. Rationally, I understand why — Grousbeck wants to secure a collective bargaining agreement that will keep money flowing into his pockets. The NBA is suffering and Grousbeck wants the landscape significantly altered. But damn it. Grousbeck — owner of a win-now team, owner of a franchise that still makes plenty of money if not heaps of it — should be the owner most desperate to see this lockout end.

Cynics will say Grousbeck owes fans nothing, but we buy the tickets, the jerseys, the hats, the NBA league pass subscriptions, the Celtics DVDs, and we are the reason the Celtics and Comcast are entering a partnership. And if he doesn’t want the lockout to end for the fans, most of whom Grousbeck will never meet, he should at least want the lockout to end for Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, a trio Grousbeck presumably knows well, a trio that could see their last meaningful season together crumble under the NBA lockout.

If Grousbeck doesn’t see the importance of having an NBA season, especially for the Celtics, well then hell:

Maybe he should just buy Levi.