While Rajon Rondo rejoined a 17x championship-winning team he had previously reached the promised land with, that team was not the Boston Celtics.
The Los Angeles Lakers were the winners of the Rondo sweepstakes after the floor general was waived by the Memphis Grizzlies. Traded from the Los Angeles Clippers along with Patrick Beverley, both guards have since been shuffled off the Grizz roster with Beverley now in Minnesota.
Rondo now rejoins LeBron James, Anthony Davis, a similarly re-signed Dwight Howard, and newly acquired Russell Westbrook and Carmelo Anthony on a budding veteran superpower that may just be the new 2021-22 title favorite.
In deciding to once again don the purple and gold, Rondo opened the door for another former Boston Celtics point guard to return to the place of his most prominent success.
And he’s no stranger to this site clamoring for his return: the five-foot-nine messiah and former MVP candidate, Isaiah Thomas.
Who else could it be?
Thomas was looked at by the Los Angeles Lakers before Rondo ended up dashing hopes of a return to Tinseltown. IT was once a teammate of LeBron James in Cleveland, though the experiment lasted a few games before he was shipped off to the Lakers. Injuries cut his season short that year, and he hasn’t been able to replicate that level of play outside of a handful of games with the Washington Wizards in 2019-20.
Ex-Boston Celtics GM Danny Ainge didn’t pull the trigger on bringing Thomas back during the Lake Buena Vista bubble or during the COVID-19 stricken 2020-21 campaign, and it was their past strained relationship that perhaps played a role.
It’s a clean slate with the new Boston Celtics President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens having been the man who oversaw his ascension to MVP candidate in the first place.
The forbidden door is open. Walk through it, Brad.