LOS ANGELES — I chatted with Bronny James this week.
An interview was scheduled, but before it, he told Lakers public-relations staff he couldn’t quite place a face with my name. He knew I wrote about his childhood at the Akron, Ohio, private school he attended when his dad played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, but otherwise, he needed a memory jolt. So, after a recent Lakers win, in the locker room, I was called over to say hello ahead of our discussion the following day.
As soon as Bronny saw me, his face lit up as though he remembered. I saw the same smile I recalled from when he was just a boy, dribbling circles around his friends on the court after a Cavs win. I saw the same grace from the time his grandmother ordered him to remove all the luggage off the conveyor belt at the airport after a family trip (we were on the same flight), instead of having Cavs security do it, and he obliged without complaint. I witnessed the same politeness from when Bronny was a freshman at the University of Southern California, recovering from a major health scare, and he stopped in the Lakers press room during a game and spoke in conversation with “yes, sir” and “no, sir.”
But was the 20-year-old, 6-foot-2 shooting guard standing in front his locker, shaking my hand and making jokes, the same basketball player I saw just five months ago join LeBron James, the league’s all-time leading scorer and proverbial “face of the NBA” for more than a decade, as the only father-son duo to play in the same game in NBA history?
No, I can’t say he was the same. This version of Bronny James is better.
“I definitely think I’ve improved, not only as a player, but just having a different mindset as a player to go out and play my game and play the game that I know how to play,” he said. “I feel really good about it — I see the progress.”
It’s not just Bronny, or me, for that matter, who thinks so. The Lakers say Bronny has improved this season, the confidence he’s playing with when he’s on the court in the NBA suggests it, and the numbers he’s put up in the G League insist it’s true.
As of this writing, Bronny appeared in 20 NBA games for the Lakers, averaging 1.7 points and shooting just 26 percent from the field in about five minutes per game. Now, if you haven’t seen him, you may be thinking, “This is an improvement?” Hold on a sec.
In a recent, close loss to the Denver Nuggets, the Lakers were without several of their rotation players, including Bronny’s dad and new Lakers superstar Luka Dončić. Coach JJ Redick turned to Bronny for 16 game minutes, and though he made just one of the five shots he took, his bucket was a crucial 3-pointer in a pressure situation. He also got to the foul line and turned in a steal.
“It’s great that JJ had the level of trust to throw him into a big game the other night at Denver, which is a tough place to play, and he got in the game, made a couple defensive plays, made a corner 3, and I think that’s what he prides himself in is the 3-and-D type of archetype,” Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka said. “And for him to be doing it in moments in NBA games, that’s great that he’s even grasped that already.”
Redick added that Bronny “has been fantastic in practices” lately, his confidence and aggression have grown, and his “biggest area of improvement is probably his playmaking, and I don’t just mean that in terms of passing, but just his ability to play on and off the ball as a decision-maker — either a scorer or a passer.”
So that’s what the big-league Lakers think of their second-round draft pick, taken 55th overall in June. They see an improved, young player deep on their bench, which is where he should be at this point in his career. Any outside suggestion or expectation that Bronny, who missed half of his lone college season recovering from cardiac arrest suffered during a summer practice caused by a congenital heart defect, would do more for the Lakers than what he’s done this season was off base.
But his growth in the NBA’s minor league, the G League, is more substantial. In 16 games for the South Bay Lakers, Bronny is averaging 17.4 points on 31 percent shooting from 3-point range, with 4.2 rebounds and 4.3 assists in 30 minutes per game.
If you’re not immediately impressed, consider this: Bronny never averaged that many points, in college or in high school. In one pro season, the most scrutinized rookie campaign in the history of the NBA G League, because of who Bronny’s father is, this young man turned himself into a scorer.
“I just think it’s a confidence thing,” Bronny said of his transformation. If you’re wondering, he averaged 4.8 points in 25 games for USC, and in high school at Sierra Canyon in suburban Los Angeles, he averaged 12.8 points for his career and 14.2 points as a senior.
“I think in high school, I would hold back a little bit, just because of how young I was, my experience, stuff like that,” Bronny continued. “Then college came, and with the scare that happened, didn’t really come back with a good amount of confidence. … I also wasn’t really given that freedom in college, even though I wasn’t producing like I wanted to.
“But going out and getting reps under my belt after that scare, it’s been good for my confidence.”
After the Lakers drafted Bronny, they signed him to a four-year, fully guaranteed contract. He would be a Laker, and any time he spent in the G League was to be temporary. It was unusual for a player of Bronny’s relative inexperience, and the statistics he turned in during his one partial season in college, to get that kind of contract and security. His drafting and the contract that followed brought accusations of nepotism, given LeBron’s status with the Lakers. Then it appeared Bronny would only play in the G League for home games (the South Bay Lakers play at the NBA team’s practice facility in El Segundo, Calif.), which only seemed to create more harrumphing on the outside toward Bronny.
The Lakers franchise, Bronny and his advisers decided he should play road games for South Bay — maybe not all of them, but when they made sense. It was clear he needed the reps and would not be getting them in the NBA. Pelinka said he discusses with Bronny when it looks like a good opportunity for Bronny to join South Bay and said Bronny has met every requested assignment with positivity and agreement.
Bronny’s first road game for South Bay was on Dec. 12, against the Phoenix Suns’ affiliate, and he enjoyed his first 30-point game as a pro — more notable because his first three games in the G League hadn’t gone that well (six points on 2-of-9 shooting in his debut; four points in the second game; 16 points but 6-of-15 shooting in the third). He was again inconsistent in the three G League games that followed, and he had a trip planned with South Bay for just after Christmas to go to Cleveland, where his grandparents still live and where he spent some of his formative years, for two games.
Bronny scored 38 points total in those two Cleveland games and has been even stronger since. He’s had games of 31 and 28 points, and even on the nights he doesn’t shoot particularly well, he finds ways to score and otherwise impact the games. This was not the case for Bronny during his Lakers’ summer-league session (averages of seven points on 33 percent shooting in six games) or the NBA preseason (4.2 points and 8.3 percent shooting from 3-point in six games).
“I saw consistency coming (before that Cleveland trip), and that’s like the biggest thing I’ve been criticized about for a minute, just being consistent as a player,” Bronny said. “I started to see that, and it kind of drove you to (consider that), well, maybe these people don’t think that I could be consistent as a player, be a good player, produce as a player. So just seeing those numbers and seeing myself on film, I believed in myself more, and that boosted my confidence. That little Cleveland stretch definitely sparked a little something.”
In our talk, it was Bronny who first brought up the criticism. Because of who he is, and the history he and his father made, and his draft and contract status, Bronny was always going to have a brighter spotlight on him than any other late second-round pick (or even front-runners for Rookie of the Year or the No. 1 pick in last year’s draft, for that matter).
Perhaps the worst of it, if only because of the platform held by the man who issued the criticism, came on Jan. 29, when, after Bronny went scoreless in a game for the Lakers, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith said on “First Take”: “I am pleading with LeBron James as a father: Stop this. We all know that Bronny James is in the NBA because of his dad.”
The incident angered LeBron, who let Smith know about it in a face-to-face exchange after a Lakers home game earlier this month.
Throughout Bronny’s brief pro career, his father had always said that Bronny tunes out or doesn’t hear the critics — he keeps his head down, focuses on the game and so on. But in our conversation Bronny said, multiple times, he actually does hear some of what is said about him, and he uses it to his advantage.
“My first thought about everything is I always try to just let it go through one ear and out the other, put my head down and come to work and be positive every day,” Bronny said. “But sometimes it just, it fuels me a little bit. I see everything that people are saying, and people think, like, I’m a f—— robot, like I don’t have any feelings or emotions.
“But I just take that and use it as fuel for me to go out, wake up every day and get to the gym early, get my extra work in, watch my extra film every day, get better every day,” Bronny continued. “That’s what Rob wants me to do as a young guy, coming in, playing in the G League and learning from far on the bench watching the Lakers play.”
Bronny said he’s up at 8 each morning that he isn’t on the road with the Lakers or in the G League. He’s at the practice facility by 9, when his work begins. It includes film study and individual work, playing in “stay ready” games for players at the end of the Lakers bench and physical therapy.
He said he doesn’t get much time to work out with LeBron, in part because of the Lakers’ sporadic practice schedule when the games come quickly and also because Bronny is in the G League on occasion.
“I am hopping from team to team, I’m not always with him on the Lakers,” Bronny said. “So not as much right now, but for sure when summer comes and when the offseason comes around, we’ll definitely be in the gym a lot together and working out and stuff like that.”
And maybe, after LeBron’s 22nd season and, hopefully for him and the Lakers, a deep playoff run, father and son will find time for some one-on-one.
“I can definitely get by him,” Bronny said, when I asked.
If Bronny continues his current trajectory, perhaps they will get more court time — in practices or games — for the Lakers before his dad retires. Bronny still has much ground to cover to get to that point, but he has, inarguably, made strides in his first season.
Moments before I saw Bronny in the locker room this week, he had been serenaded by the Lakers’ home crowd, who demanded he get into the game with chants of “Bronny, Bronny.” Redick obliged, and Bronny promptly drained a 3, to the delight of everybody in the building, other than perhaps the player guarding him.
“He doesn’t seem to take a day for granted,” Pelinka said. “He really embraces every day, and you just love to have people like that in your program.”
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; top photos: Alex Slitz, Sean M. Haffey, Allen Berezovsky, Adam Pantozzi / NBAE; Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)
