Rajon Rondo is traded to the Dallas Mavericks. (AP)

The Dallas Mavericks sent shockwaves around the NBA by trading for Rajon Rondo. The Mavs acquired the All-Star point guard by giving up role players Brandan Wright, Jae Crowder, Jameer Nelson and draft picks to the Boston Celtics. The Celtics will reportedly receive a first-round pick in the 2015 draft and a second-rounder in 2016.

Rondo joins a Mavs squad that features future Hall-of-Famer Dirk Nowitzki, Monta Ellis, Tyson Chandler and Chandler Parsons. The new Dallas starting five easily becomes one of the most potent in the Association, and it gives Dallas coach Rick Carlisle another chess piece to work with.

Rondo could fill the Jason Kidd role that worked perfectly in 2011 when Dallas won the NBA title. Rondo does need to score to be effective. He’s a walking triple-double — just like Kidd — on offense and on defense he provides the Mavs a terrific on-the-ball defender who can stick guys like Tony Parker, Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry and Chris Paul.

Carlisle should send his former Boston buddy Danny Ainge a Christmas card because the Celtics president of basketball operations just gift-wrapped him a wonderful holiday present. With Rondo, the Mavericks went from a very good team into one of the elite squads in the Western Conference.

“[This trade] puts [Dallas] in a position to win a championship,” ESPN analyst and former NBA player Jalen Rose said on The Grantland Basketball Hour. “They are going to be a terrific team in Dallas. [Rondo] is going to balance the floor. This guy is a floor general. He makes players around him better.”

The Mavericks are now loaded in the backcourt. Rondo and Ellis are the clear-cut starters; J.J. Barea will likely back him up at the point and Devin Harris can play either guard position. Raymond Felton is still on the roster, so Carlisle will have to make a decision who to sit because you can’t rotate five guards. It’s a nice problem to have.

If there’s a negative side to the deal it’s the Mavericks’ weakened frontcourt. Wright was a solid backup center who kept Tyson Chandler from having to play a ton of minutes. Now, Tyson will have to extend himself a bit more.

The trade ends Rondo’s nine years with the Celtics, a stretch that includes an NBA championship in 2008 and a trip to The Finals in 2010. Rondo carved out his niche in Celtic lore with some memorable playoff moments. None better than when he dislocated his left elbow in Game 3 of the playoff series against the Miami Heat in 2011. Rondo courageously returned to the game, arm dangling, and led the Celtics to an emotional win at the TD Garden.

But when the Celtics started peeling off their championship squad, Rondo — who is coming off ACL surgery last season — didn’t fit into the rebuilding process. The Celtics are clearly looking into the future, and Rondo was in the way of that plan. They drafted point guard Marcus Smart in 2014, which led many to believe was the beginning of the end of the Rondo era in Boston.

Rondo’s statistics declined in some key areas this season. His free throwing shooting percentage is a career-low .333 and his scoring average dipped to 8.3 points per game, his lowest since his rookie season of 2006-07, when he averaged 6.4.

“We all know what he does really well,’’ Celtics coach Brad Stevens told The Boston Globe. “There’s very few people in the game that can do some of the things he can do and you can probably extend that — the way he passes the ball and the way he gets other people the ball — you can extend that to the history of the game. He’s really done a lot of good things.”

Through 22 games this season, Rondo is leading the league in assists (10.8). He also is averaging a career-high 7.5 rebounds. He has also put up three triple-doubles. He has averaged 11 assists per game in four out of the last five seasons. He’s only 28 years old, so he is still in the prime of his basketball career.

“The last two years he was playing like a guy who didn’t want to get hurt,” said Grantland editor Bill Simmons, a longtime Celtics fan. “He’s gonna go to Dallas and he’s gonna be awesome. He always rose to the occasion. Now that he’s on this [Dallas] team, that’s perfect for him.”

Joel Huerto is the editor and publisher of OneManFastBreak.net. Follow him on Twitter @onemanfastbreak.

Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, Ray Jackson, and Jalen Rose sit together during the NCAA title game between Michigan and Louisville at the Georgia Dome. (CBS screen grab)

The pregame festivities at the 2013 national championship game between Michigan and Louisville took a backseat to five guys who for some reason have been anointed as God’s gift to college basketball.

Meet Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, Jimmy King and — yes, most notably — Chris Webber, also known as “The Fab Five.” Rose, Howard, King, and Jackson sat in the same section of the Georgia Down to watch their beloved Wolverines, but C-Webb decided to sit elsewhere — although his arrival created a bigger buzz than anyone else.

“I know you guys were surprised,” Rose told USA Today after Webber arrived Monday. “I am not surprised that he came. We’ve been friends since we were 12 years old.”

Rose added: “I knew he was going to be here and I’m excited that he’s here. It’s great for the university, it’s great for him and it’s great for the players.”

As entertaining as they were during their two years together, the Fab Five never won a Big Ten title nor did they win a national championship. They did go to two straight Final Fours, which is a big achievement, but fell short twice in the title game.

So why are they so beloved?

Part of the love affair with the Fab Five stems from the coverage they have received from ESPN and writer Mitch Albom, who authored the book “Fab Five.” Albom’s great writing skills elevated the Fab Five to undeserved legendary status. If you read the book it basically painted Rose, Webber, Howard, King, and Jackson as some sort of basketball pioneers who invented trash talking and baggy shorts, as if no else did these things before they arrived.

First of all, trash talking has been a part of basketball well before the Fab Five. As for the baggy shorts, Michael Jordan wore them first during the 1980s then Jerry Tarkanian’s UNLV Runnin’ Rebels made them fashionable in the early 1990s. All the Fab Five did was grow the shorts 2 inches longer and made it fashionable. If there’s major fashion statement the Fab Five contributed to the game were the black shoes and the black socks. They basically took Brad Sellar’s idea — who coordinated the all-black shoes for the Chicago Bulls in the ’80s — and added their own flavor.

Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, and Chris Webber led Michigan to two straight appearances in the Final Four. (GETTY IMAGES)

ESPN is partly to blame for the whole Fab Five phenomenon, producing a documentary in 2011. Meanwhile, the 1989 Michigan squad that featured Glen Rice, Rumeal Robinson, Loy Vaught, Sean Higgins, and Terry Mills barely get a mention these days. They’re the real Fab Five!

The ’89 Wolverines coached by Steve Fisher is THE ONLY Michigan team to win a national championship, and left a bigger imprint in Ann Arbor than any Michigan squad. That’s the team that should be celebrated. What Rice and Co. accomplished in the ’89 NCAA Tournament run surpasses anything Webber and Co. accomplished in two years.

Webber’s presence at the 2013 NCAA championship game became a big story especially after his Detroit pal, Rose (now a commentator for ESPN) campaigned for him to move past hard feelings and reunite with the group.

Webber played a major part in having Michigan’s Final Four appearances in 1992 and 1993 vacated. His bitter falling out with the school came after the NCAA in 2003 required the school to disassociate him and three other players for 10 years, a punishment that ends in May.

But time heals all wounds and Webber seems to be coming around. He posted this on his Twitter account:

For the rest of his life, Webber will always be associated with one play: the timeout. He will never live that down because it turned out to be the defining moment of the 1993 national championship game against North Carolina. It painted Webber as the goat and became the butt of all jokes. Webber rarely talks about “the timeout,” which tells you he hasn’t gotten over that nightmare, and Rose believes it may be the reason why C-Webb wants to distance himself from his time at Michigan.

“I think the timeout had a lot to do with it,” Rose said on his podcast on Grantland.com. “I think he wants to disassociate himself with that moment and with that school — in theory, with us — to kind of rebuild his life mentally to say, ‘My career started my rookie year in the NBA.’ That’s unfortunate.”

The 2013 Michigan Wolverines lost to Louisville in the NCAA championship game, but their tournament run shouldn’t be overlooked. It has been two decades since Michigan’s basketball program has been relevant, and John Beilein’s squad should be commended for their great work.

Maybe 20 years from now we’ll be talking about Trey Burke and Co. instead of the overhyped Fab Five.

Joel Huerto is the editor and publisher of OneManFastBreak.net. Follow him on Twitter @onemanfastbreak.

Is Duke point guard Kyrie Irving the best fit for the Cleveland Cavaliers? (USPRESSWIRE)

Jalen Rose has been down this road before. His recent comments about Duke University players sparked a media frenzy, so you would think Rose would back off slamming Duke for a little while.

Well, Rose was at again recently when he suggested that the Cavaliers should take Arizona’s Derrick Williams with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft over Duke’s Kyrie Irving, who most basketball experts say is the best player in the draft.

“I’d take him with the No. 1 pick,” Rose said of Williams. “Look at the NCAA Tournament. He jumped off the television. He’s a 6-10 player that can play the 3 and 4, shoot the three, jump off one foot, two feet, and if I’m the Cavs I’m trying to get two for a dollar in the top four.”

Rose continued, “I take [Williams] No. 1 and then I take [Brandon] Knight fourth, from Kentucky, so now I get a point guard that’s dynamic.”

Rose says if you’re going to take a point guard with the No. 1 overall selection he better be a great athlete, someone who is off-the-charts in terms of speed and power.

“Look at where the game is going,” Rose said. “You got Derrick Rose, you got Russell Westbrook, you got Deron Williams. These guys are tremendous athletes.

“Not that Kyrie Irving is not gonna be a good player, I think he is. But he’s not a fantastic athlete.”

Rose’s point is that Irving is not going to be catching lobs and throwing it down over 7-footers at the rim. Irving has all the ingredients to be a solid point guard in the NBA, but Rose doesn’t consider him an “explosive” player, someone who can take over a game and dominate with his athleticism.

Rose may be on to something here because, even though Irving only played one year (half a season really) at Duke, he still fits the mold of a Duke point guard.

“Let’s talk about the point guards from Duke: we’ve had Williams Avery, Bobby Hurley, Jay Williams, Chris Duhon. That’s what [Irving] has to fight.”

Rose added, “Just like a quarterback in college that comes from a certain system who has to who that he can make it in the NBA, Duke point guards have to prove the same thing. It’s not a diss, it’s a fact.”

In Rose’s defense, coming out of high school, Irving and Knight were neck-and-neck in terms of ranking, and some even had Knight ahead of Irving. So, why all of a sudden did Irving jump to the head of the class when Knight played just as well in his one season at Kentucky?

Rose makes a valid point, and the Cavs should seriously think about taking Williams at No. 1 and hope that Knight will be there at No. 1.

Former NBA player and Michigan standout Jalen Rose, right, arrive at the Nokia Theatre with Terrell Owens during the ESPY Awards in Los Angeles. (GETTY IMAGES)

First of, I like Jalen Rose. He’s very well-spoken and honest. Not enough athletes today spew opinions with brutal honesty, and Rose is in the minority. However, Rose went a little too far with his raw, uncensored commentary regarding the black players on Duke University in ESPN’s documentary feature on “The Fab Five” that aired on Selection Sunday.

In describing his hatred for Duke, the outspoken leader of University of Michigan’s famous freshman class in 1991 revealed that he thought Duke’s black athletes, specifically Grant Hill, were subservient to the white establishment and called them an “Uncle Tom.”

To borrow a line from my good friend Jason Reid, who is a columnist for the Washington Post, the term “Uncle Tom” is the worst thing one black man can direct at another black man. Reid later wrote that Rose’s “Uncle Tom” reference, misguided as it is, asserts that academic achievement and professional accomplishment affluence somehow reduces or eliminates a person’s “blackness.”

Rose had an opportunity to soften his stance and recant his statement on ESPN’s First Take a day later, but he wasn’t exactly apologetic.

Rose said, “As a 17-year-old recruit, that’s exactly how I felt. At that time, I felt like I was not good enough for certain stages. That’s just a fact. But also that’s something I used as motivation. Now, I understand what their program represents because I’m a mature adult. I know that it’s a private school. I know that do recruit from well-to-do, affluent families. But also understand some of the reason why so they do see some of their players selling their goods for money. Also, they want to get kids that would represent the program the right way. I get all of that. But, that’s the minority. I was speaking for the majority. That’s exactly how I felt then. It wasn’t an individual, it wasn’t somebody 20 years later.”

When Rose was asked if Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski would recruit him now, Rose said “I think would recruit my kids.”

“I don’t think they would have recruited me. I never seen Coach K in Detroit. But that’s just me,” Rose said.

Rose was an honor roll student in high school and is clearly well versed in cultural issues. But, he’s way off base in his assessment of Hill or any of Duke’s black athletes. Just because Hill grew up in affluence doesn’t reduce his level ethnicity or his standing in the black community. To call Hill an “Uncle Tom” is absolutely absurd.

Rose explains that his comment had nothing to do with being a racist. Basically, Rose said “it’s being somebody who is socially conscience and you’re paying attention to what’s going on around you.”

Certain schools recruit a certain kind of guy. That is a fact. But, again, a black player shouldn’t be called an “Uncle Tom” just because he joined a private school in Durham, N.C. It’s undeserving. When I was 17, I may not have been smartest kid on the block but I was smart enough to know that you don’t call a black kid an “Uncle Tom.”

The bottom line is this, Duke should be allowed to recruit its type of players as well as Michigan should be able to recruit its type of players. As much as Rose was correct in saying that Duke would not consider a player like him because of his background, he was wrong in bringing up the term “Uncle Tom.” Rose could have made his point just as clearly had he just said Duke recruited a bunch of rich kids.

Joel Huerto is the editor and publisher of OneManFastBreak.net. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/onemanfastbreak.

Whether it is self-inflicted or not, the Washington Bullets…oops, I mean Wizards…have been a huge disappointment this season, and the team’s problems go beyond Arenas and his penchant for carrying weapons and storing them at the Verizon Center in case someone calls him out on a gambling debt.

Washington is only 11-22 for the season and has dropped seven of its last 10 games. The latest loss was a 121-98 thrashing at the hands of the Cleveland Cavaliers on Jan. 6.

Those are very dismal numbers for a team that was projected to be a playoff contender in the East, boasts three legitimate NBA All-Stars in Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison, and owns a resume that includes four postseason appearances in the last five years and an offense – when all three stars are healthy – considered one of the best in the league.

And, as if the team needed more bad news, Arenas was recently involved in a troubling gun incident with teammate Javaris Crittenton in which Arenas admitted to pulling out unloaded guns from a strong box stashed in his locker.

Arenas – who has five years remaining on a $111 million contract he signed in 2008 – says it was all part of a “practical joke” and denied threatening or assaulting anyone. He reasoned that he brought four guns to the Verizon Center to keep in his locker in order to get them out of his house and away from his children.

Well, NBA commissioner David Stern didn’t find the humor in Arenas’ so-called prank, as Stern suspended Arenas indefinitely without pay and the incident is still under investigation by the police.

Even some of his peers are having a tough time defending Arenas.

“Gilbert has been a little quirky at times on and off the court. This should get him straight,” former NBA player and current TV analyst Jalen Rose said on ESPN’s First Take. “If he doesn’t get a felony, he doesn’t get any jail time and he has a misdemeanor or anything less, if I’m David Stern I suspend him for the rest of the season.

“[The season] is only halfway through, and the Washington Wizards are the most disappointing team in the league anyway,” Rose continued. “They’ll get a lottery pick and it gives them and their fans a fresh start for next season.”

Washington’s implosion was definitely a mystery to many oddsmakers and handicappers, including Las Vegas Sports Consultants, which had the Wizards at 50-1 to win the NBA championship at the start of the season. Did the oddsmakers simply overrate them?

“Absolutely we overrated them,” said Mike Seba, sports book manager with Las Vegas Sports Consultants, who dropped the Wizards down to 200-1 in his latest power rankings.

“This is a classic case of the parts being greater than the whole,” said Seba, who added that the Wizards’ troubles started well before the Arenas-Crittenton situation.

“You have great individual players, but this is a team that doesn’t play together. They don’t look like the same team as they did before,” he said. “There are not enough basketballs to keep them happy. Too many offensive weapons and there’s a lot of animosity.”

It’s quite obvious that the Wizards are not playing with the kind of free-flowing style that they enjoyed under former coach Eddie Jordan and, so far this season, the players have not bought into Flip Saunders’ more structured approach.

“Flip has tried to come in and change things. With this kind of a team, they’re better off letting them play,” Seba explained.

When Arenas, Jamison and Butler are in sync, which was in the 2006-07 season, the Wizards were fourth in the NBA in scoring (104.3). This season, they are in the middle of the pack at 17th (99.1).

But whatever the team’s issues are, the firestorm starts and ends with the eccentric Arenas, the noted self-proclaimed goof ball whose been known to drift in and out of reality from time to time.

Often times, Arenas seems to be more concerned with his statistics than his team’s success, which hasn’t exactly endeared himself to his teammates. “Arenas is not the same player since the injury,” Seba said. “He’s still a good player but he just doesn’t like the players around him. He’s kind of an individualist.”

When he was healthy, Arenas was a 28-point scorer and comparable to Kobe Bryant when in comes to late-game heroics. But after two injury-plagued seasons that limited him to just 15 games from 2007-09, Arenas’ scoring average has dipped to 22.7 and the multiple surgeries have robbed him of his explosiveness off the dribble.

Now with this latest gun incident, Arenas may have robbed himself of his freedom.

“The problem for Gilbert in dealing with the commissioner is he’s not the first NBA player to have issues with guns,” Rose said. “You saw it with Stephen Jackson and now you see it in the news with former Net Jayson Williams. Gilbert may unfortunately be the example, and you don’t want to be the example like Michael Vick was.”

This article also appears on Covers.com.