The decision of Boogie Ellis to return to USC for the 2024 college basketball season has elicited a lot of thoughts, as you might expect. One such thought is, “Now that USC has Boogie, it really doesn’t need Bronny James.” A related thought: “Bronny will look at Oregon or Ohio State, since he won’t get enough playing time with the Trojans.”
Those are reasonable, logical lines of thought, but one should not assume that Bronny James can’t fit on next season’s USC roster as a central player who logs nearly 30 minutes per game. It can certainly happen.
With Isaiah Collier and Boogie on the roster, it’s true that Bronny — in the event that he chooses USC — would come off the bench at the start of the season, and maybe throughout the whole season. It could be that Bronny would rebel against being a sixth man with the Trojans. That’s certainly possible.
However, he could very realistically play close to 30 minutes per game and get the amount of playing time he thinks he needs and deserves in order to develop his game.
Yes, we would not see Collier, Boogie and Bronny as a trio on the floor at the same time. If you’re thinking that lineup combination is going to exist for more than 10-12 minutes per game, you need to adjust your expectations.
However, if Bronny does pick USC, you are very likely to see Andy Enfield put at least two of those three players on the floor at the same time for a whole game, and that’s where the Trojans can give Bronny enough minutes.
It’s simple math: Two guards playing 40 minutes apiece equals 80 minutes per game. If you put a third guard into the mix, three players sharing 80 minutes works out to 26.7 minutes per game if distributed equally.
Getting 27 minutes per game is not an especially heavy workload, but it isn’t light, either. It’s not “peripheral role player” playing time. It’s significant run, but it also means that over the course of the full season, a player is not going to be overextended. Guys will stay fresh. If a game goes into overtime, they will have plenty left in the tank. On the second game of a road trip (the Saturday game after a Thursday game), players will have ample energy.
Of course Bronny James won’t come to USC if he gets just 18 to 20 minutes per game … and Andy Enfield can pretty easily make sure Bronny will play over 25 minutes per game.
Given how much Bronny has seen his father, LeBron James, deal with load management in recent years with the Los Angeles Lakers, the idea of playing managed minutes — but still more than 60 percent of every game — shouldn’t be a turn-off for him.
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