Rajon Rondo will miss the first month-plus of the 2017-18 regular season following surgery to repair a sports hernia injury, which basically just means he’s completed his New Orleans Pelicans initiation.
Here’s The Vertical’s Shams Charania with the details:
New Orleans Pelicans guard Rajon Rondo underwent surgery Tuesday for a sports hernia injury and will miss four-to-six weeks, league sources told The Vertical.
Rondo met with a specialist Monday in Philadelphia and confirmed the need for surgery. He suffered the injury in Friday’s preseason loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Rondo has served as a leader for the Pelicans and the starter at point guard. Rondo worked to build chemistry with fellow starters Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins, Jrue Holiday and Dante Cunningham in training camp, but now the Pelicans will be without their lead guard.
Losing Rondo stings, in the sense New Orleans will have to wait and see whether its planned backcourt featuring him and Jrue Holiday can jibe in games and settings that matter. But, from a win-loss perspective, his absence is not the end of the world.
Holiday is a top-12 point guard when fully healthy and rocking, and the usage-rate pecking order will be much easier for the Pelicans to navigate without him on the floor. Incorporating Rondo, a ball-dominant point guard, beside all three of DeMarcus Cousins, Anthony Davis and Holiday figures to be a trying task.
It’s one, make no mistake, the Pelicans must try tackling, since they signed Rondo in the first place, but they might find this Cousins-Davis-Holiday dynamic works a little better—in which case Rondo’s injury buys them time, allowing them to explore it without him before then possibly, maybe, bringing him off the bench upon return.
