LOS ANGELES — There are 4 minutes left in the second quarter, it was an hour.
LeBron James and his son, Bronny, got up from the Lakers’ bench and walked toward the scorer’s desk.
The family slowly noticed, the noise gradually developed. First as a whisper. Next applause. Of course, there was great joy that LeBron and Bronny James were making history and becoming the first father-son duo to play together in a regular-season NBA game.
And later the power within the environment… decreased.
On the court, play resumed, Timberwolves forward Julius Randle went right at Bronny (welcome to the league, girl) and crashed a jumper over the ladder down, slimmer James.
A minute later, LeBron drove, drew two defenders and handed it to his son, who was once noticeable for a three-pointer, and ignored him. He would go 0 for two, with just one rebound and a field score of plus-minus of -5, and great fortune didn’t matter in the Lakers’ season-opening 110-103 victory over the Wolves on Tuesday night. evening.
During the hour that Bronny returned, permanently, to the bench, Lakers fans had never regained that joy they had shown an hour earlier. One thing was missing once. Maybe they would have needed a LeBron-Bronny year that never came: for three to fall, or for a father and son to lend a hand, or some other standout year in which the kid and the faded legend shine together.
Or maybe, deeply ill, Lakers fans, like many around the league, couldn’t shake Bronny’s doubts and worries that even this year with dad, as cool as he was, he can’t take medication.
Possibly what was once thought of as a party is actually, for Bronny, a gigantic opportunity. That what will so transform a story of sweetness, a great pleasure for the people on Tuesday night, will actually be the beginning and the catalyst of something completely different.
This is the NBA, not a gathering of people. This may be a league of players who will not give up the same dream within the plans of James’ people. If Bronny is not the one most affected by what his name and presence will impose on him, competitors and challengers will probably rack up hours on that court very crunchily.
After all, this was just a beginning, of course. A game for a boy too young. But the first acts of any story, even those controlled and encouraged with cautious precision and the kind of strategy and influence that LeBron James can wield, are simply that: beginnings. Any Tuesday night party seems ill-timed.
Watching LeBron and Bronny play together once was interesting. But for anyone sincere enough to take into account how competitive the NBA can be and how crunchy it will be to have LeBron James’ name on your back in years to come when he’s no longer there to support, that particular year. When Bronny James made his debut with Dad it was more of a question mark than a feel-good year.
Could be great if this works. If Bronny James makes a career within the league. At the level, say, of Gary Patyon II, some other player who has a well-known name, but who has also made his own in the NBA.
I hope it happens. We will all have to do it. There is a negative explanation for why to support failure. And on the final date of the NBA Draft Mix, I saw what I hoped would have been inexperienced shoots in the early phases of Bronny James’ possible occupation.
But it’s easy to forget the nagging worries that, at best, Bronny is here in the league too soon, pushed to the front of the field by his father’s forces rather than his own ability, and that on Tuesday . The debut with dad (and the laudatory protection that will surely be practiced) will make things more difficult.
Jealousy is real. And if he stays in the NBA this season, or spends enough time in the G League, he will face, and occasionally with, those who covet what he has and resent how it was given to him. he.
At the height of the game, I asked several NBA executives and scouts what they had gained from Bronny James’ presence in the NBA. The solutions were not encouraging.
A Lakers source, listening to Bronny play games in the first game, really said: “Good. Do it. Now we can end the charade.”
An executive from a rival group who had scouted Bronny personally was once similarly pessimistic: “Honestly, I feel sorry for the kid. He tries to play the right way. He plays hard. He can’t shoot. He’s just not that good. He’s very athletic, but not big enough.
Or, as one former general manager summed it up: “He’s going to be in trouble in the G League.”
There are more like that. And maybe they are all wrong. Maybe Bronny James, as I mentioned in Chicago in the mix, can channel that important adulthood that he happens to possess regardless of his year and navigate the expectations, the jealousy, the doubts and the name on his back, and build some path for himself , just one day, in this league.
Probably.
Sure, There was that last generation of the preseason game. That showed signs of possible and bursts of athleticism that the rival government had noticed. But it was also true that it was a preseason game, rarely a marker of what is to come in an NBA career.
Other Bronny fans and believers will point out the list that the Blonde Shape Warriors were supposedly all for Bronny before the Lakers took him in the second round with the 55th overall pick, yet he turned himself in because, get this, – They sought to “respect the wishes” of LeBron.
That, to put it kindly, is evidence of disbelief.
It’s also out of the playbook LeBron used when fighting the evil press as a freshman in Miami. I know. I formed that group, and he and his group altered the anonymous reports very, very successfully to push themselves and express narratives.
For starters, the NBA is a cutthroat industry, and the theory that any team would do what’s best for its group to “respect the wishes” of a rival player could border on negligence. Second, almost no one believed that Bronny James was a draftable pick in the future summer, other than the fact that he is Bronny James.
An original name, at most they will tell you, would have meant a very different route to the league, if there was one.
Disagree, it’s much more likely that that record was once intended to put in the effort and provide protection to Bronny from the very real worries of what will happen if, in fact, he’s not in a position now (or in a sufficient amount and duration). beneficial) for the NBA.
“I could be wrong,” one scout told me. “Maybe a lot of us are wrong. But I don’t see it. And it could be a very difficult reality for him.”
The sport was over. The debut had come and gone. The Lakers had won.
In the Lakers’ penthouse, while Anthony Davis was talking about the night of plenty he had before a group of reporters spruced up his penthouse, LeBron James walked in and sat in his own penthouse closest to him. LeBron, in doing so, made his presence known, while AD mentioned Bronny, and how special he, as a father, will have to be this year.
Bronny entered at a lower hour, largely overlooked, walking calmly alongside his father, past the reporters, and up to his own penthouse. He sat down, I’m sick, maybe as ignored as he had been all week, or probably will be again for an inordinately long hour.
Now he was an NBA player, formally, with three minutes on the field to achieve it. When he next came to talk to Click, he came with his father, Bronny first, LeBron second.
LeBron talked about an amount. Bronny was calmer, with a constant, introspective gaze and his father, to his right, was talking about the Lakers’ first game.
They talked about the night, the immediate future, the story they had just created together. They laughed at The Nike commercial with the cereal and the hazing.. They talked about how many times LeBron has been away as a father to play this game. And so they talked, for a year, about possibly the most notable part of this story: time.
“I talked about it years and years ago, for this moment to come,” LeBron said. “It was great. I don’t know if it will affect both of us for a while.”
Or the rest of the people. Not really anymore.
Because whatever Bonny’s story is, it’s that, her moment, that may ultimately color the lines of what happened Tuesday night and what it really meant.
