The bet the Lakers made on Bronny James always came with a huge amount of baggage, their second-round draft pick impossible to separate from the team’s star, who made no secret of his desire to play with his son.
Bronny James’ first NBA appearance came on opening night, long before he was ready. His first points, in Cleveland, came when the game was decided. And his early performances in the G League were only mildly encouraging, if at all.
But after disappearing from the spotlight due to a heel injury that cost him several weeks, James returned to the Lakers’ roster in the South Bay, surprising many by putting up road games, not to mention the numbers he put up produced.
In his last three G League games, James is averaging 20.7 points on a 43.1% shooting percentage while showing the type of defenseman the Lakers hope he can develop. James will play for the South Bay Lakers in the NBA’s G League showcase this week in Orlando.
“What we emphasized with him all summer, preseason and early in the season was that he needed to get in top shape so he could be an impact player at a high level defensively,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said after practice on Tuesday . “And then he has the heel injury and he has to lose some of that momentum. [But] we are excited about what he has done over the last two games and look forward to seeing what he does in the lineup.”
James’ real breakout game came Thursday, when he scored 30 points (and made 23 shots) in a game. The next time he played, he followed it up with 16 points.
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“Keep stacking the days, keep working. The work always prevails in the end,” LeBron James said Sunday about the message to his son. “It’s just great to see him get back into the flow, get back to his game, get back to him, just playing freely and going out and just playing the game that he loves and knows how to play it. I liked his aggressiveness. He was aggressive from start to finish in both games.”
The aggressiveness part is a challenge with Bronny James’ personality. It was a knockout that scouts used against him during the pre-college evaluation process. But it, like everything else Redick said, can be learned if the motivation is there.
And teamwide, Redick said he knows how to motivate his players.
“It’s not a punishment, it’s… you’re either going to do the things we ask of you and you’re going to play, or you’re not going to do those things and you’re not going to play” Redick said: “It’s very simple. And that is exactly the way I will coach the basketball team in the future. So I think not only for Bronny, we, what we envision for him to be able to play and have an impact on winning, he has to be able to lay the foundation and do those things. It’s no different than Max Christie or Dalton [Knecht, the Lakers’ first-round pick]. And if you do those things, you will be rewarded with playing.
“… The development process: if you are clear about what you want and do the things we ask, you will be rewarded. So that’s in a way how you learn it.
Redick said Tuesday that coaching Bronny James is different because his situation is different than any other player who has entered the NBA. None of them had LeBron James as a father.
“He has to get to the point where it’s OK to fail,” Redick said. ‘I think he has a real reservation about failure. I think a lot of that is because he’s had a camera with him since he was eight. I can’t, I can’t imagine [my sons] Knox and Kai have cameras at their rec league games. I think once he develops that, he’ll take off, literally take off. He will do whatever is asked of him. He did everything we asked him to do.
“It’s just really part of player development, not just the physical skills and the physical development, but it’s also the mental development.”
Christie said the pressure on any young player increases in a Lakers uniform, not to mention one that says “James Jr.” on the back.
“Being with the Lakers brings a lot of perks just because we’re the biggest franchise in the world,” Christie said. “… It’s hard to fail with the Lakers because I feel like every mistake you make, at least that’s how I felt my rookie year and even last year a little bit, is in bold.”
In fact, Christie has already figured that out this season, using the experience of a bad decision to foul late in the Lakers’ loss to Oklahoma City to improve in clutch situations.
“It wasn’t easy to fail,” he said. “I felt like it was very hard. You look on social media and all these negative comments and stuff like that. And so I’ve learned to adapt and grow where I’m staying away from that for the most part now. And also, going in with myself and my own voice in my head, my own self-confidence, my own self-esteem, learning that it’s okay to fail and knowing that you have to fail before you succeed. Failure is a stepping stone to success. You learn from it, you grow from it.
“I don’t know a really talented person who has had success all his life. They failed at certain points in the spotlight. In the dark they failed. So you’re going to fail at some point and you just have to take it on the chin and find a way to just get better.
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The Lakers and Christie think Bronny James can do that.
“I mean, the kid’s a good player, man. I mean, no matter what anyone says about him, ‘He’s not good enough. Yada yada yada.” The kid is a good player,” Christie said. “If he wasn’t here, he wouldn’t be here. So he has grown a lot just by being with us. I think he’s learned a lot having LeBron as someone around him. It’s clear he knows a lot about this kind of thing. And adding him into a team setting as well, he asks a lot of questions, he pays attention to details, and you can see him picking up a bit of a rhythm now in the G League.
“So, as I said before, obviously you’re going to fail before you succeed and everyone has their own journey. And it just so happens that he’s really in the spotlight. But some people don’t realize that it takes time for someone to get used to something new, especially at a professional level. So he just takes his time. He takes his own steps. He’s going through his own journey and we all believe in him. Everyone in this organization believes in him. So that’s all you need for a young guy.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
