He's becoming more than a 3 and D in case anyone hasn't noticed. About midway through the season they started running him at the PG slot and his handles, feel for the position (contrary to what the book on him and stated by him was early on) and especially his good passing have not disappointed as well as his ability to get to the rim. Excellent quickness, athleticism and strength. He's going to be to guards his size what Pops was to SFs strength wise within a couple more years.
weirdly enough, it's the defense we'll need to see. the g league clips demonstrate he has strength, great hands, and super quick reactions in the upper body. but can he keep nba pgs in front of him? i believe he'll be able to navigate screens due to the strength, but the next play is to just iso and dust him. that happened a few times that i can recall with the varsity. if he can be gpII like on defense, his offense is already ahead of where gpII's is after like, 8 years of development, imo.
Chip off the ol block. Solid all around game. not sure if he’s starter material or not, but I can see him in a bench role and spot starting if needed eventually .
Needs to watch Gabe and Vando and others who are good with their hands and keep them UP. I sound like a broken record but am amazed everyone on staff and LeBron himself aren't clueing him in that it's part of good defensive basics. Makes offensive player think twice about his passes around him and maybe even some of the blow by attempts.
Developing nicely. SAS’s comments are going to look like some of the dumbest of all time once the kid carves out a role on the big club, maybe even as soon as next season.
nah, everyone will just fully switch the narrative to "the lakers manipulated the draft to get a solid role player!" "several teams told me they tried to draft bronny in the first round, but he said he'd go back to school!" ...and various other b*******. there's no accountability in sports media. zero. they won't embarrass each other by unearthing old bad takes because every single one of them lives in the same giant glass house in this regard.
Another thought for me is the similarity of what we were all looking forward to with Gianna Bryant “wanting” to play basketball like Pops and having one of the greatest of all time in Kobe to teach her not only the skills and training regimen needed to succeed but the mental aspects of the game. I was so looking forward to that. In most ways this is very similar in rooting for Bronny and being excited with his obvious rapid improvement curve clearly from the hard work put in.
It’s the age of Zero Patience and lame “Hot Takes” just for ratings. The thing I don’t understand: how are there that many people out there who tune in to these Talking Heads??
C'mon OX .... admit you're wrong on Bronny before next year when you'll look really stoopider if you inexcusably haven't yet by then .... with his coming progression on top of how far he already has in just 9 short months. Even Plaschke is eating the black olives and drinking the juice. Plus you can show you're a better debater than Slick, who will never ever ever ever ever admit he's wrong no matter what the facts are. VOICES Bill Plaschke Lakers I was wrong. Drafting Bronny James was a win for the Lakers Lakers guard Bronny James drives to the hoop against Bucks guard AJ Green during the first half of a game at Crypto.com Arena last month. The rookie son of LeBron James had a season-high 17 points in a loss. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) By Bill Plaschke ColumnistFollow April 6, 2025 3 AM PT He has made 17 baskets. He has played in the equivalent of less than three full games. Seventeen Lakers have spent more time on the court. Sixteen Lakers have scored more points. He has been but a speck of lint on the Lakers’ lapel, a bit of dust at the end of the Lakers’ bench, a small and irrelevant bystander in the Lakers’ long and arduous journey. Yet, admit it, Bronny James has been huge. The nepo baby whose arrival last summer was ripped across the NBA landscape has quietly risen above the criticism and gradually drowned out the noise. Lakers forward LeBron James gets a high-five from his son, rookie guard Bronny James, during introductions before a game against the Pelicans at Crypto.com Arena last month. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) The famous son whose selection as the 55th pick in the 2024 NBA draft was trashed in this space as “not very smart” has actually become part of something that borders on ingenious. I was wrong. I was very wrong. There have been few things more right about this season than the saga of Bronny James. He hasn’t made an NBA impact, but he hasn’t been a distraction, either. Arguably the league’s most disliked and discounted rookie when the season began, he has won over fans, impressed teammates, inspired his father, and silenced the media. Shut me up, anyway. Ten months ago, when the Lakers acquired the oldest son of their best player, I wrote that the move was an insensitive joke. Ten months ago, I had the hottest of hot takes. “It’s not very smart,” I wrote. “And, for two of the main people involved, it’s not very fair.” LeBron James (23) and Bronny James (9) become the first father-son duo to play together in NBA history on March 22, 2024, when they enter a game against Minnesota. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) I concluded my screed with, “Bronny is coming … the circus is starting.” Turns out, the circus never arrived. The reality is, in one of its finest efforts, the Lakers’ management handled the sensitive situation with nimble smarts. Everything about this strange arrangement has worked, every fear has been squelched, all awkwardness has disappeared, and the Lakers have been left with a happily productive father and a gratefully improving son. Bronny James has been their most improved player simply by morphing from a punch line into, well, a player. “Since Day 1, I’ve just been impressed with the person that he is,” coach JJ Redick told reporters last month. “And to deal with … frankly, bull— because of who his dad is and just keep a level head about it and be a class act says a lot about him, says a lot about that family …” Maybe it was truly cool with Redick from Day 1, but for the rest of the league, Bronny’s arrival raised a giant red flag. After all, this was a 19-year-old kid who missed most of his only college season while recovering from a heart attack, and suddenly he was given a Lakers uniform and a guaranteed contract? This initially seemed like at least partly a publicity stunt designed to enable Bronny and LeBron to become the first father-son duo to play together in the NBA. Except the Lakers surprisingly didn’t milk it, and actually enabled it when relatively few people were watching. In the second quarter of the season opener against Minnesota in late October, with the town’s attention focused on the Dodgers, father and son checked in together and played nearly three minutes. Bronny returned to the bench for the rest of the night and that was that. History made. Moving on. The Lakers won the game and Bronny barely made a ripple. The tone had been set. Nothing to see here. “ tried not to focus on everything that’s going on around me, and tried to focus on going in as a rookie and not trying to mess up,” Bronny told reporters after his debut. He was just trying not to mess up. That was his mantra the entire season, a pledge filled with the respectful humility that framed his image into that of a likable kid who was just here to hoop. He was a nepo baby, but he didn’t act like it. He was the most famous son of the most famous basketball player in the world, yet he quietly behaved like just another lucky stiff. This attitude quickly became apparent to the fans, who began cheering for him as if he was the team’s lovable mascot, which, in a sense, he was. The consistently popular chant would surface late in Lakers blowouts, when arenas would fill with, “We want Bronny!” The league’s most criticized rookie became the most embraced, and even though he played in only 22 games and was on the court for double-digit minutes in only four of them, those cheers resonated. Was he good? What did you expect? No, by NBA standards, with few rare exceptions, he wasn’t great. In one nightmarish game in Philadelphia, when he went 0-for-5 shooting while being consistently burned on defense in 15 awful minutes, he was miles from great. Bronny James and his father LeBron warm up before a game against Atlanta in January at Crypto.com Arena. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) But by fair standards — playing where he belonged in the developmental G League as a teenager with essentially no college experience and a history of heart failure — he was promising. He played 18 of 50 games for the South Bay Lakers, and his last 11 were strong as he averaged 22 points, five rebounds and five assists. He scored 30 or more points three times, including 39 points in 38 minutes in a late March win against the Santa Cruz Warriors. While standing on the court after that game, the rarely interviewed Bronny offered a compelling glimpse into his situation. When asked by SpectrumSportsNet what he had been trying to prove, he said, “Just that I belong out there. That’s all I’m trying to prove. A lot of people say I don’t, but I just come out, work every day, try to get better every day and prove myself every day.” So, yeah, he admitted, he’s felt the heat. “All the criticism that’s thrown my way, it’s just amazing to shut all that down and keep going,” he said. All this time, his father was watching. In fact, perhaps the biggest takeaway of the first year of the son’s appearance is the enormous effect it has had on the father. LeBron has openly cheered for Bronny, as evident after the 39-point game when LeBron tweeted a note of support that read, in part, “SMILE THROUGH IT ALL … KEEP GOING!!” Lakers guard Bronny James knocks the ball out of the hands of Bucks guard Kevin Porter Jr. during a game last month. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Yes, it was in all caps. LeBron has also fought for his son, accosting ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith at courtside of a recent Lakers game and rebuking him for making his criticism too personal. In all, the appearance of Bronny has energized and invigorated LeBron, who is on pace to play 71 games, equaling the most since he came to Los Angeles seven years ago. Statistically, LeBron is playing about as well as he’s ever played as a Laker. Defensively, he’s playing even better, as if every night he is trying to set an example for his son. His emotional investment in this season was clear from his first comments after he and Bronny played together. “That moment, us being at the scorer’s table together and checking in together, it’s a moment I’m never going to forget,” LeBron said. “No matter how old I get, no matter how my memory may fade as I get older or whatever, I will never forget that moment.” Those moments have stacked upon each other in creating a vastly different equation than the one most imagined for Bronny and LeBron. Everyone thought the father would inspire his son. Instead, it’s been the other way around. “I missed a lot of Bronny’s points because of my career over the course of his childhood and AAU games and high school and for me to see all the buckets he’s had as an NBA player with us, to be here with him, is super special,” James told reporters in New York in early February. “It’s probably the greatest thing I’ve ever been a part of.” LeBron James, who sat the game out because of a groin injury, slaps hands with son Bronny before a game against Milwaukee. The younger James would have a season-high 17 points in a loss at Crypto.com Arena. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Nearly two months later, Bronny was scoring 17 in a short-handed loss to Milwaukee, quietly handling his rare success with humility and grace, cementing what everyone had come to believe. No matter what happens during the rest of the season, the forced, frantic shotgun marriage between Bronny James and the Lakers has been a blissful success. “There’s not really much I can do [about] people, random people, talking about me every day,” he told reporters. “Can’t really do much about that, so I just go in the gym and work, put my head down and try to get better.” After watching Bronny James do just that — head down, work hard, get better — one can actually describe his first Lakers season with four words that few previously dared to string together. Like father, like son.
Never use plashke as a defense for a stance. He is a idiot even when he gets something accidentally right. That being said, I am a fan of Bronny and love the work this kid puts into the game.
Well being honest color me unimpressed with Bronny’s game against Portland with his chance to start. He was OK on offense with some assists and some some nice rim attempts and J’s. Wasn’t hot or anything. But he’s really pissing me off at the coaching staff for how they “let” him play D which was supposed to be the main focus at first for him. He looks nothing like a “dog” out there with the level of aggressiveness he shows most of the time and just like Julius Randle his hands far more often near his sides than ever being up and active. Like they should be with his great wingspan for his height. I watch Jemison on D on the perimeter and Bronny should be getting after it like him even. Or Goodwin, DFS, AR, his old man or Rui or Luka. He looks/plays small out there with them down and now it’s bugging me as there’s no excuse that “someone” of all those guys on staff or of his teammates hasn’t got with him about it yet.
