IRVINE, Calif. — In June, when former NBA All-Star and two-time champion Rajon Rondo married his wife in Lake Como, Italy, his first NBA head coach was among the attendees. And there, Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers delivered his former point guard a message.
“Get your ass to camp,” Rivers told Rondo, as Rondo recalled to ESPN on Thursday.
With that, Rondo has spent the week with the Bucks as a guest coach for their training camp at UC Irvine, and Rivers told ESPN that Rondo will remain with the team in an unspecified capacity this season. “You’ll see him a lot,” Rivers said. “That’s all I’ll say.”
Rondo, who last played with the Los Angeles Lakers and Cleveland Cavaliers in 2021-22 and formally retired from a 16-season NBA career this past April, said he “absolutely” hopes to be an NBA coach someday.
“There’s a lot of factors that go into coaching,” Rondo said. “You just can’t say, I’m going to be a coach, and then everything works out and that’s how it happens. So certain personalities have to mesh, [and there’s] a lot of sacrifice. There are certain things that I’m learning. The morning meetings, the amount of hours you’re spending watching film, it’s a lot.”
Wearing a Bucks hoodie and sweatpants, Rondo has been assisting players during practice and filling up a notebook with handwritten observations.
“I’m learning what it looks like,” he said of being on a coaching staff.
Rondo said he doesn’t have an exact path in mind.
“You see people go from not coaching to head-coaching jobs all the time,” he said. “A lot of people go straight to becoming assistant coaches. So there’s just no path. I just want to seek as much information as possible.”
Rondo declined to say whether he received any offers from other teams, but he said he appreciated that Rivers, who coached Rondo for seven seasons in Boston, is giving him this opportunity.
Rivers returned the praise.
“He’s the smartest player I’ve ever coached — and not just smart,” Rivers told ESPN. “He knows when to and when not to say stuff. He’s a great team builder. It’s just fun, and it’s great to have him around.”
Asked whether he’s finding his voice as a coach, Rondo said, “I think I’ve always had that. It’s hard for me to be quiet if I see something. I’m a helper. That’s what life’s about, helping the next person around you, and this is where I’m at this particular time this week. I’m here to help, and that’s what I can offer.”
Rondo’s potential for becoming a coach has been noticed almost since he began playing basketball. His high school coach once told ESPN that Rondo would one day become a coach, as did his college coach at Kentucky, as did Rivers, and as did Brad Stevens, who succeeded Rivers when Rivers left the Celtics in 2014 to become the head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Rondo has long been preparing, too, by studying coaches on the nine teams that he played with throughout his NBA career.
“There’s a different type of respect that you have when you look at it from their perspective,” Rondo said. “Obviously, they’re making decisions based on only one thing and that’s just trying to win. So, as a player, you may think he’s picking on me, or he’s not playing me for some reason, but, at the end of the day, his job is on the line. So, he’s not never really personal from that perspective when you’re a coach. Sometimes players may feel that way, so it’s a different seat that you’re sitting in and understanding of the game.”
Rivers previously told ESPN that perhaps the only issue Rondo would need to adjust to as a coach is having patience with players who couldn’t see the game as he did.
“The difference I think with Rondo is he sees everything,” Rivers said. “He doesn’t just see his position, he sees everybody’s position. He knows everybody’s plays. I’m telling you, he’s a savant. He’s the only one I’ve coached — and I’ve coached some really smart players — but Rondo’s understanding of sets, his job, what this guy should be doing, and doing the right stuff, is unbelievable. And he sees it early. That’s why our relationship is so good. And it was bad early, because he is so smart. It turned into an amazing relationship because he’s the only player I used to give my play sheet to before games. It’s the only time I would finish games where I would say he called a great game, because that was him from my play sheet, like a catcher.”
Rondo, 38, has heard the comment about patience before, but he said he’s at a different place in his life, especially as a father of three.
“Kids create patience, and then as you continue to live life, you develop patience as well, you know what I mean?” he said.
He also cited his experience playing on so many teams and with different star players.
“It’s about being able to understand how everyone can get coached differently,” he said. “You can’t have the same approach when you’re coaching versus one team versus next and then personnel.”
Rondo said he still gets the desire, at times, to get on the court as a player.
“There’s so many people in camp, I don’t want to take anything from anybody else,” he said, “but being an ex-player, you get that itch. Like, let me show you how it’s done.”
Rondo, a four-time All-Star, led the NBA in steals per game in 2009-10 and in assists per game in 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2015-16. He made the league’s All-Defensive Team four times and won NBA titles with the 2007-08 Boston Celtics and the 2019-20 Lakers. He averaged 9.8 points, 7.9 assists, 4.5 rebounds and 1.6 steals in 957 career games.
These days, Rondo said he’s working to finish his bachelor’s degree in human communications at the University of Kentucky — an effort he began nearly 20 years ago — and that he should earn his degree by the spring. Most of the courses he takes are online.
“I have an exam tonight,” he said with a laugh. “It’s so different going to school 20 years later. It’s completely different. It’s funny. I’m writing my papers and kids are talking about their career and what they want to be in life, and I’ve already kind of done that.”
For Rivers, having Rondo around reminded him of his own journey from being an NBA point guard to a head coach.
“I just think there’s certain guys that should be a coach,” he said. “It’s funny, I never thought I was going to coach, and Pat Riley told me I’m coaching. I said, ‘No, I’m going to do TV.’ He said, ‘You’ll be a coach’ and Pat Riley never relented. And when I did TV those first three years, he would send texts or letters like, ‘Get your f—ing ass on the sideline.’ And I feel the same way [with Rondo].”