Ugh, Rajon Rondo Tore His ACL

The Celtics point guard is out for the year. This is awful news.
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On Friday night, during the Celtics’ awful, awful loss to the Hawks, point guard Rajon Rondo reportedly tore his right ACL. He’s out for the rest of the season. When the news broke on Sunday afternoon, my Twitter feed let out a collective groan.

Sadly, it appears that the nucleus general manager Danny Ainge built in 2007 finally might be splitting apart completely. Ray Allen is gone, Rondo is hurt, and it’s unclear what’ll happen to Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. After Boston beat the Heat in double overtime on Sunday, poor Pierce apparently found out about Rondo’s injury while being interviewed by ESPN’s Doris Burke. Oof.

Coach Doc Rivers, for one, claims he isn’t ready to break up the Celtics. “We aren’t going anywhere,” he told Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. “I don’t get that thinking. You couldn’t get what you wanted [in deals]. I still like our team. We’re going to figure it out.” Unsurprisingly, Ainge’s comments were more opaque. “I’m going to look and see what opportunities are there, like any other year,” Ainge told Wojnarowski. “Last year, I was close to making a change that I felt would give us a better chance in the here and now, and in the future. And those [kinds of trades] are hard to do.”

For now, though, Boston will make due with Avery Bradley at the point. On Sunday, Rondo—who was at TD Garden during Boston’s win over Miami—reacted to his diagnosis in a way that only he could. According to Celtics radio play-by-play man Sean Grande, the injured guard turned to analyst Cedric Maxwell and said, “I’m coming back to play in two weeks.”

A man can dream, can’t he?