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Celtics' Danny Ainge on Rajon Rondo's availability: It's 'all speculation'

Rajon Rondo will be entering the final season of a five-year, $55 million contract. (Alex Trautwig/Getty Images)

Rajon Rondo

Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said any talk about point guard Rajon Rondo being on trading block is "speculation."

Ainge also described a report that the New York Knicks had turned down a deal for Rondo as “maybe the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Rondo is scheduled to make $12,909,090 next season in the final year of his contract before hitting free agency in the summer of 2015.

“That’s all speculation,” Ainge said, via the Boston Herald. “Those aren’t facts. People don’t know that, so it’s just people speculating on Rondo’s free agency next summer. That’s all that you’re hearing. You’re not hearing any facts from anybody. Those conversations haven’t even been discussed, so that’s just speculation.”

Rondo played 30 games last season after coming back from a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. He averaged 11.7 and 9.8 assists a game.

“We love Rondo, and Rondo loves us,” Ainge said. “We don’t feel like there’s pressure that we have to do something or there’s some sort of deadline that something has to get done by. You know, sure Rondo has to see progress and Rondo has to believe that we’re going to be contenders and be in the picture and have something. But that’s an ongoing thing. I mean, we feel that way with everybody.

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