NBA Free Agency Rumors: Rajon Rondo signs with Pelicans

Following a ton of rumors about his interest in the Los Angeles Lakers — and their interest in him — free agent point guard Rajon Rondo will sign with the New Orleans Pelicans, according to Shams Charania of the Vertical.

This isn’t a Lakers’ signing, but it’s relevant to them because it takes one rumored target out of the pool of players we know they were looking at to fill their need at back-up point guard. Most reports about the team’s interest in back-up point guards centered on Rondo and Lakers free agent Tyler Ennis, so barring a new candidate entering the fray without warning (always a possibility), it seems the team will likely just do what they were “leaning” towards and re-sign Ennis.

Outside of Ennis and Rondo, the Lakers also recently signed point guard Alex Caruso to a two-way contract. Given that those contracts specifically only allow a player to spend 45 days with their NBA team and the rest of the time in the G League without a new, NBA contract though, it would seem the Lakers don’t view Caruso as a full-time back-up option yet, otherwise they would have just signed him to an NBA deal.

Still, the big news here is that the Lakers aren’t signing Rondo, a scenario that had the fanbase (justifiably) split. Now we’ll never know whether the positives of signing him would have worked out or the negatives would have outweighed them, but it’s hard to feel like the Lakers really missed out on much here.

Harrison Faigen is co-host of the Locked on Lakers podcast (subscribe here), and you can follow him on Twitter at @hmfaigen.