He has been but a speck of lint on the Lakers\u2019 lapel, a bit of dust at the end of the Lakers\u2019 bench, a small and irrelevant bystander in the Lakers\u2019 long and arduous journey.<\/p>\n
Yet, admit it, Bronny James<\/a> has been huge.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n (Gina Ferazzi \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n The famous son<\/a> whose selection as the 55th pick in the 2024 NBA draft was trashed in this space as \u201cnot very smart\u201d has actually become part of something that borders on ingenious.<\/p>\n I was wrong. I was very wrong. There have been few things more right about this season than the saga of Bronny James.<\/p>\n He hasn\u2019t made an NBA impact, but he hasn\u2019t been a distraction, either. Arguably the league\u2019s most disliked and discounted rookie when the season began, he has won over fans, impressed teammates, inspired his father, and silenced the media.<\/p>\n Shut me up, anyway.<\/p>\n Ten months ago, when the Lakers acquired the oldest son of their best player, I wrote that the move was an insensitive joke.<\/p>\n Ten months ago, I had the hottest of hot takes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not very smart,\u201d I wrote. \u201cAnd, for two of the main people involved, it\u2019s not very fair.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n (Gina Ferazzi \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n I concluded my screed with, \u201cBronny is coming \u2026 the circus is starting.\u201d<\/p>\n Turns out, the circus never arrived. The reality is, in one of its finest efforts, the Lakers\u2019 management handled the sensitive situation with nimble smarts.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Bronny James has been their most improved player simply by morphing from a punch line into, well, a player.<\/p>\n \u201cSince Day 1, I\u2019ve just been impressed with the person that he is,\u201d coach JJ Redick told reporters last month. \u201cAnd to deal with \u2026 frankly, bull\u2014 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 \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe it was truly cool with Redick from Day 1, but for the rest of the league, Bronny\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n 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\u2019t milk it, and actually enabled it when relatively few people were watching.<\/p>\n In the second quarter of the season opener against Minnesota in late October, with the town\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n History made. Moving on. The Lakers won the game and Bronny barely made a ripple. The tone had been set. Nothing to see here.<\/p>\n \u201c[I] tried not to focus on everything that\u2019s going on around me, and tried to focus on going in as a rookie and not trying to mess up,\u201d Bronny told reporters after his debut.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n He was a nepo baby, but he didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n This attitude quickly became apparent to the fans, who began cheering for him as if he was the team\u2019s lovable mascot, which, in a sense, he was.<\/p>\n The consistently popular chant would surface late in Lakers blowouts, when arenas would fill with, \u201cWe want Bronny!\u201d The league\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Was he good? What did you expect? No, by NBA standards, with few rare exceptions, he wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n Bronny James and his father LeBron warm up before a game against Atlanta in January at Crypto.com Arena.<\/p>\n (Wally Skalij \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n But by fair standards \u2014 playing where he belonged in the developmental G League as a teenager with essentially no college experience and a history of heart failure \u2014 he was promising.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> in a late March win against the Santa Cruz Warriors.<\/p>\n While standing on the court after that game, the rarely interviewed Bronny offered a compelling glimpse into his situation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/CBIK8epAqsA\/hqdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n