Rajon Rondo is out in Game 3 and presumably for the rest of the Chicago Bulls-Boston Celtics series with a fractured right thumb. It’s unfortunate news for Chicago because Rondo had played exceptionally in the first two games of the series, but don’t worry, Rondo is still doing all he can while on the bench — trying to trip Jae Crowder as he runs by the Chicago bench.
Did Rajon Rondo try to trip Jae Crowder from the bench?
It sure looked like he was trying to do just that.
Here’s the play.
Rondo was asked about the play after the game and gave an extremely sarcastic answer:
My initial viewing of the play was that Rondo intentionally waited too long to trip Crowder and thus was only joking around, but after a few more watches, I can see how it’s not conclusive. I informally polled the SB Nation newsroom, and several people thought it there was legitimate intention behind the trip.
That sounds about right. From this angle, it totally looks like it could have been intentional. From another, maybe it would be clear that Rondo was just messing around. Perhaps that was his intention to start with, and he got closer than he meant to actually tripping him.
All that said, we actually have more evidence to present. In 2016, Rondo appeared to pull this same move.
That post once linked to another instance of Rondo trying that against Josh Smith, although the embedded media is now dead. So what we know is that Rondo has tried this three times, and all three times been unsuccessful.
Our conclusions are either that Rondo is an attempted tripper who is bad at actually tripping players, or a jokester who tries to balance the line of appearing to trip someone while failing to actually do so. I don’t know which one is the “preferred” option; I do know that you probably shouldn’t be either one of those things.
Notably, Crowder was traded from the Dallas Mavericks to the Celtics for Rondo in 2014, so they weren’t actually teammates. Boston pretty clearly won that trade, but I doubt that’s what Rondo is upset about. Maybe he’s regretting his short-sleeve suit choice, and wanting to take it out on someone.
It doesn’t appear that Rondo was publicly fined for either incident, so it doesn’t seem like that would happen now. Still, this is such a Rondo story, and clearly not a good look regardless of his intentions.
