Rajon Rondo's thumb is 'still broke,' so he won't play in Celtics-Bulls Game 5

Despite his determination to give it a go after missing two games with a fractured right thumb, Chicago Bulls point guard Rajon Rondo will not suit up for Wednesday night’s pivotal Game 5 against the Boston Celtics at TD Garden.

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The word came straight from the horse’s mouth at the Bulls’ Wednesday morning shootaround:

The news comes after Rondo “held a clandestine workout Tuesday night in Boston,” according to ESPN, to see if he was healthy enough to make a comeback after missing Games 3 and 4 — both of which Chicago lost — with a broken thumb suffered during the Bulls’ Game 2 win last Tuesday. No matter how much “guts and determination” might be in the reserves of a player who has carried on after dislocating his elbow and tearing his ACL, though, when something’s broken, it’s broken, and mutant healing factors don’t exist outside of comic book pages and silver screen treatments. From K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune:

As such, it remains unclear whether the 31-year-old lead guard would be available for Game 6 back at United Center in Chicago on Friday night, which will be a win-or-go-home game for the Bulls if they can’t turn back the C’s on Wednesday:

After an up-and-down regular season marked by internal strife and squabbling, Rondo made his presence felt in the first two games of this series, averaging 11.5 points, 10 assists, 8.5 rebounds and 3.5 steals per game while acting as a defensive disruptor against a Celtics team struggling to get to its offensive identity while losing the battle on the boards and getting pounded on the wing by Jimmy Butler and Dwyane Wade. Since Rondo went out, and since Celtics coach Brad Stevens made the tactical switch to move athletic shooter Gerald Green into the starting lineup over big man Amir Johnson, the Bulls have cratered, allowing Boston to score at a rate of offensive efficiency in Games 3 and 4 (110.2 points per 100 possessions) that would have been the fifth-best in the NBA during the regular season while producing buckets on their own trips at a dismal clip (98.8 points-per-100) that would’ve been far and away the worst in the league.

Hoiberg’s first choice for replacing Rondo, second-year man Jerian Grant, hasn’t panned out. Chicago got outscored by 25 points in his 20 minutes of floor time in Games 3 and 4, and Hoiberg yanked him for good just four minutes and 41 seconds into Game 4, with the Bulls already in a 14-4 hole, in favor of the bigger, longer, more defensively active Michael Carter-Williams. The former Rookie of the Year hasn’t provided much spark, either, contributing four points, four rebounds, four assists and two steals against five turnovers and five fouls in 36 minutes over three games; the Bulls got outscored by 14 points with the non-shooting MCW on the floor in Games 3 and 4.

With both Grant and Carter-Williams struggling to provide anything of value offensively and getting torched by Celtics MVP-candidate Isaiah Thomas, Hoiberg turned in the second half of Game 4 to the little-used Isaiah Canaan, who had been inactive through the first three games of the series and had played a grand total of 20 minutes since the All-Star break. The former second-round pick, who split time with the Houston Rockets and Philadelphia 76ers over the last three years before joining the Bulls this season, rewarded his coach’s confidence, chipping in 11 points with three assists, two rebounds and two steals in 34 minutes while making life just a bit more difficult for Thomas on the other end (though not quite so much late in the third quarter, when IT took over the game).

On the strength of that performance, and with Rondo still one-handed, Hoiberg will turn to Canaan to start Game 5 — the 25-year-old’s first start since April 5, 2016, when he was still wearing a Sixers uniform. The stakes here are just a bit higher.

“You’ve got to try and make it as uncomfortable as possible getting into their offense. I thought Isaiah, especially coming out in the third quarter, really set the tone [in Game 4],” Hoiberg said, according to Johnson of the Tribune. “That’s when the game shifted. It’s when we went on a run, when we got up and our ball pressure was excellent. Knowing at times he’s going to get behind us and get downhill, we just have to do a good job of trying to stay in front, make him take tough, contested shots.”

Where the Bulls turn when Canaan’s off the floor remains to be seen:

As our Henry Bushnell suggested before Game 4, Hoiberg might do well to take a longer look at no-point-guard lineups in which Butler and Wade split ball-handling duties while a bigger wing (like rookie Paul Zipser) shares the floor to add size, shooting and slashing that neither Grant nor MCW are offering right now, thus making it more difficult for the Celtics to hide the diminutive Thomas on defense. Lineups featuring the Butler-Wade-Zipser trio have outscored Boston by eight points in 22 minutes in this series, and played Boston even in 13 minutes since Rondo went down.

Leaning that way might not be Hoiberg’s preferred option. He played that wing troika without a lead guard for just 40 minutes over the course of the season, according to nbawowy.com. But with Chicago desperately needing both firepower to match the Celtics’ rejuvenated small-ball attack and enough size and length to try to return to the bullying style that helped win them Games 1 and 2, it might be worth a shot — even if, like Rondo’s chances of returning for Friday’s Game 6, it might only be a long shot.

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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