Earlier this week, Kobe Bryant and Rajon Rondo were spotted having breakfast together in Boston. Inevitably, there was speculation that Kobe was trying to recruit Rondo to join the Lakers (Rondo is an unrestricted free agent this summer). But Kobe says the two were just grabbing a bite and hanging out—no recruiting. More, from ESPN:
Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant said his much-talked about breakfast meeting with Boston Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo was not a recruiting effort to lure Rondo to the Lakers.
“No, we get along extremely well,” Bryant said Friday after the team’s shootaround at TD Garden, hours before he went on to score 22 points in the Lakers’ 113-96 loss to Rondo (12 points, 16 assists) and the Celtics. “We see the game in a similar fashion in terms of our aggressiveness and mindset. It was good to get together with him.”
While there are no active talks between the two franchises involving a trade for Rondo, sources told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne that the Lakers and Celtics did have a brief discussion a few months ago. It’s not clear which team initiated the call.
Rondo is set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer. Could Bryant, who has long raved about Rondo, envision the All-Star point guard joining the Lakers?
“No, I haven’t thought about having any future teammates before,” Bryant said sarcastically. Their meeting at The Paramount in Beacon Hill was more to chat about the NBA and memories from their two Finals matchups in 2008 and 2010, Bryant said.
When initially asked about their sitdown, Bryant joked, “It was delicious.” He also was asked whether he and Rondo — the only two holdovers from those Finals matchups — commiserated about the current state of their rebuilding franchises.
“Like a mutual intervention-type thing?” Bryant asked, laughing. “Nah, not really. We just talked about the game, we talked about the league. We talked about good old memories of playing in the series against each other, stuff like that — different strategies and things they tried to do against us and things we tried to do against them.
“It was a basketball geek conversation.”
