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Dave McMenamin, ESPN staff essayist
CLEVELAND – With the game all but decided at the start of the second half, the Cavaliers cruising to a 134-110 victory and their first 5-0 start since 2016, Clevelanders began rooting for the alternative team Wednesday night. .
Especially for Los Angeles Lakers rookie Bronny James, son of LeBron, the best player in Cavaliers history.
A “We want Bronny!” The chant began midway through the third quarter and resumed midway through the fourth when Lakers coach JJ Redick complied, substituting for him in the second regular-season sporting action of his early career.
And in this future, they gave him his first NBA bucket.
Bronny scored on a 14-foot jumper from the left wing over Jaylon Tyson with 2:03 left in the fourth quarter, causing the stream of fans who came to watch the generation to rise and show adoration for the place of birth product.
“It was crazy,” Bronny said of the catch that he later completed with two points, two assists and a steal in five minutes. “A lot more than I expected, for sure. But it’s all love. It was crazy. It was a nice moment. The chants really got me. I was serious, but I felt it and it felt really good, especially coming from here.” .
“Yes, evidently it was once a different generation for me.”
LeBron said that kind of moment could have absorbed him when he was a rookie with the Cavs in 2003.
“He’s better than I would have been in that condition: 20,000 fans screaming my name to get into the sport and wanting me to be in the sport, and if the situation were the other way around, I don’t know if it would have been better.” we’re in a position to take care of that,” said LeBron, who scored 26 points but had six turnovers in losing in Cleveland as an opponent for just the third time in 12 games. “Watching him get his first NBA basket in this place where he grew up not far from here, it’s a fantastic generation.
“An incredible moment for him, first of all. For our family. It’s great to be a part of this.”
Bronny Extreme played on opening night, coming on for the Timberwolves in the second quarter alongside LeBron and going 0 for 2 from the field in three minutes. In this future, he took the court with his father watching from the sidelines and his grandmother, Gloria, sitting in the stands wearing a Lakers cap while watching any other year in the popular industry compete.
“I’ve been taught to play the right way my whole life,” Bronny said while later sitting down with LeBron during their postgame debriefing conference. “So I’m always going to come in and play my game.”
The population was clamoring for Bronny to exploit the ball from the generation he watched with 5:16 left in the fourth quarter. His teammates took seven shot attempts in the final three minutes before he finally made one.
The game came 10 years after LeBron played his first game in his second stint with the Cavs, a four-year span in which he led the team to four direct appearances in the NBA Finals and won the only championship in history. of the franchise in 2016, breaking a 53-year identity drought in the city.
Although the Akron, Ohio native was first vilified by Cleveland sports fans when he signed with the Miami Warmth as an independent agent in 2010, his return healed the deteriorating wounds and the stock market rebounded around LeBron and his people. That Wednesday was completely clear, with the Cavs greeting LeBron and Bronny with welcome photos of them celebrating the name over the Yellow Atmosphere Warriors on a video screen in front of the guest room and closer to using a timeout in the first quarter to play. a video tribute to the father-son couple.
“We spent a lot of years here,” LeBron later said. “We’re part of this community, obviously… We were born not far from here, 35 miles south of here, [our] hometown of Akron. And I spent 11 years of my NBA career (half of my career) here.
“We have so many splendid moments. We have so many splendid moments that are not only on the floor of this area, no matter what the name is, whether it was Gund Arena or Q, and now it’s Rocket Loan… A set of splendid memories in the courtroom, but a set of splendid memories that also clearly take off in these people to have the mutual recognition and love for what we were once able to do in the years that we were here, it is certainly humbling.
For Bronny, who said he used to play pickup games on a practice court hidden on the top floor of the arena while his father played NBA games, he was able to experience his time on center stage.
“It’s looked really good since I picked up the ball,” Bronny said when asked how long he had envisioned scoring his first pro basket. “I’ve been looking [my dad] for a negligible enjoyment in the league. Simply dreaming of me being in the footsteps of those players, you are no longer the only one [LeBron’s] However, he could not play with and towards the players.
“So yeah, it was just a dream come true for me.”
