Then, about 34 minutes before tipoff, Rondo suddenly changed his mind, and he talked trainer Ed Lacerte and the rest of the Celtics' staff into cutting him loose. For the first time since Dec. 15 in New York, the Celtics' point guard was ready to take the court and play.
"I knew he wanted to play," Celtics coach Doc Rivers later said. "I knew that [Saturday], but I didn't think he was going to play. But he played, and he was great."
Rondo only played 28 minutes in his first game back, and his impact wasn't dominant by any stretch. But his influence was felt across the board by a Celtics team that needed a reprieve from endless injury concerns, and the C's rallied late for a 93-79 win over the Raptors to celebrate his comeback.
It was a good day for Rondo, and a good day for the Celtics, who are now one step closer to being a healthy basketball team again.
"He really wanted to play because he thought the more he sat, that it was going to get stiffer," Rivers said of Rondo. "And we needed him. He was great down the stretch, and you could just see the difference in the execution. All the passes — we ran basically just one play, and we got almost every option out of our plays. That's what a point guard does for you."
Rondo only had eight assists and five turnovers. He wasn't handling the ball or generating plays as much as he's used to, but his presence had an effect on the team's ball movement at large. The Celtics made 38 shots and assisted 30 of them, shooting 38-of-70 (54.3 percent) as a team.
"You can miss shots, and if guys are missing shots, then you don't see it," Rivers said of Rondo's eight helpers. "But you could just see how comfortable Paul [Pierce] and Ray [Allen] were. And to me, that's key for us. I just think that with Rondo, because he knows everything we run, we were back into running stuff that we had basically put in hibernation while he was out. So that was nice."
From here, there are two dimensions of Rondo's road to a complete return to All-Star caliber Rondo. There's the physical — making sure there's no further swelling and no aggravation to the injury — and the mental side.
Physically, Rivers is cautiously optimistic for his point guard.
"He'll be sore as heck tonight, I'm sure," the coach said. "And flights don't help, you know. Hopefully the Canadian police gets us through customs quickly so we can get on our flight. The flight hurts, obviously, but he'll be fine, I think."
As for mentally? That's the good part.
"It was good," Rivers said. "That's one of the reasons I think [Lacerte] was really pushing him to play — to try to get through that first hurdle. Rondo's never been hurt, really. I think young players, they hear '100 percent,' and they realize that there's really no such thing once the season starts. So that was a good hurdle."
From here, Rondo's in good shape. He's regaining the confidence to play like the Celtics' MVP again, and the return to physical prowess isn't trailing far behind.
Rivers has often repeated this season that his worries aren't with one injury or another — they're with the cumulative effect of all his injured players. But on Sunday evening, the coach got to cross one name off the list, and an important one at that. All things considered, it was a pretty good day for the Celtics.
