Magic welcomed Bronny to the Lakers in his familiar, signature style.
The Los Angeles Lakers selected Bronny James at the No. 55 pick on Day 2 of the 2024 NBA draft on Thursday in one of the most anticpated draft picks of all time. Laker icon Magic Johnson noted (as he typically does) the obvious point. In this case, it is that LeBron and Bronny James represent the first father-son duo to play in the NBA at the same time on the same team. Bronny James should play for the Lakers in the NBA summer league in Las Vegas, beginning with a game against the Houston Rockets on Friday, July 12, at 4:30 p.m. Pacific time on ESPN and ESPN Plus.
In his lone season at the University of Southern California, Bronny James played in 25 games, averaging 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game.
In July of 2023, the 19-year-old was hospitalized after suffering cardiac arrest during a basketball practice at USC. As a result, the freshman guard missed the first eight games of the season as he recovered from a medical procedure to treat a heart defect.
In high school at Sierra Canyon, James was named a 2022-23 McDonald’s High School All-American and was considered the No. 20 prospect by ESPN in the Class of 2023.
Congratulations to Bronny James on being drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers! This is a historic moment because LeBron and Bronny are the first father-son duo to play in the NBA at the same time and on the same team. Watching Bronny suit up for the @Lakers during Summer League in… pic.twitter.com/jGRbGiD0n6
— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) June 27, 2024
Goooood morning, folks! Welcome back to the Morning Win. Happy Friday! Can you believe July 4th is next week? What in the world? It was just March. Thanks so much for reading the newsletter today.
From the very beginning, it has always been an inevitability that Bronny James would join his dad, LeBron James, with the Los Angeles Lakers. LeBron has always made it clear this was his intention, even if some strings needed to be pulled to get it done.
Regardless, it’s done now. And LeBron certainly seems happy that it’s finally happened. But, of course, there’s been a backlash to it because there’s a backlash to almost everything LeBron does these days.
Well, sure. I do have thoughts on that and the state of the Lakers organization as a whole. And maybe one day soon I’ll share those thoughts with you.
But the questions I have today are a bit more, uh, let’s call them granular.
I want to know how this whole arrangement between Bronny and Bron is going to work. Like, what does this look like? In fact, I have five specific questions I need answers to.
What on Earth does Bronny call LeBron now? I’ve never worked with my dad, but I can’t imagine that if I did work with him, I’d call him “dad” at work. That’s weird. He can’t call him that, right? But … are they on a first-name basis as parent and child? Does Bronny just call him two three? I don’t know, man. Again: This is weird.
What happens on the road? I’m not saying LeBron is out here acting a fool on the road, but I’m not not saying that either. Bronny is also 19 years old on an NBA team. He’s for sure going to act a fool on the road. Do they avoid each other like the plague then? Who tells Savannah somebody was acting out first?
What happens when one of them messes up? What if Bronny mistimes a cut or bricks a wide-open 3-pointer off a pass from his dad? Savannah is definitely going to hear about that one.
Do they room together? There’s no way they room together. They can’t room together, right?!? There’s no way. Bronny, I hate this for you, brother.
Which teammate does LeBron make passive-aggressive tweets about to get Bronny more playing time? This is happening. It’s definitely happening. My vote is on D’Lo.
This season is going to be so weird for you, Lakers fans. Good luck.
Welp. USMNT is still USMNT
Folks got their hopes up for the U.S. Men’s National soccer team after it played Brazil to a tough draw a few weeks ago. They thought this team might actually be serious for once.
As it turns out, it is still a completely unserious team that we should never have taken seriously in the first place.
The USMNT lost to Panama on Thursday, 2-1, after a late goal in the 88th minute basically ended the match. Now, the USMNT’s path to the quarterfinals of the Copa América is in deep question.
It wasn’t that 88th-minute goal that lost the U.S. the match — it was this silly red card from Tim Weah. He clocks a guy in the back of the head and gets ejected. USMNT essentially played the entire match down a man.
Weah will also be suspended for the next match against Uruguay, which USMNT will probably need to win to advance to the quarterfinals.
What a shame, man. What a shame.
Is … is Novak Djokovic actually going to play at Wimbledon?!?!?
(Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty Images)
Novak Djokovic tore his meniscus just a few weeks ago at the French Open. He had surgery on his knee to repair it on June 6. It felt pretty safe to assume he might be down for a minute.
I mean, at 37 years old, recovering from a torn meniscus can’t be the easiest thing in the world, right? I thought we might actually be seeing Djokovic hit the beginning of the end here.
He’s playing, folks. Novak Djokovic has somehow made it to Wimbledon.
Depending on the draw, he’ll likely have a match on Monday or Tuesday. As the No. 2 ranked ATP player in the world, Djokovic can’t see Sinner until the final. But he could still match up against reigning champ Carlos Alcaraz a bit sooner, who is currently ranked No. 3.
That doesn’t even really matter, though. Djokovic feeling well enough to play in this tournament is quite the achievement alone.
Hopefully, he holds up.
Photo Friday: Lord Stanley in all its glory
Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports
I just love pictures with the Stanley Cup. Here’s Aleksander Barkov celebrating with it as fireworks explode in the background. What a pic.
Quick hits: Jewell Loyd is TOUGH … NBA Draft grades … and more
Dalton Knecht does things Bronny James can’t yet do. This is a plain fact.
The Los Angeles Lakers selected Dalton Knecht at pick No. 17 in the NBA draft from Tennessee. The former SEC Player of the Year will instantly make the Lakers better. What Knecht will also do: Make it harder for Bronny James to get a lot of minutes with the Lakers next season. Knecht is a bigger investment, being 38 draft spots higher as an obviously superior college player with an NBA-ready profile. He also plays on the wing, as Bronny does. That’s a duplication of roles on the roster. Knecht should get ample minutes along with the established Laker veterans. It’s hard for Bronny to make the same claim and elbow his way into a comparable amount of playing time.
“While the Lakers were a decent eighth in 3-point shooting percentage this regular season, they were 28th in 3-point attempts. Furthermore, they were 15th in both categories out of the 16 teams that made it to the 2024 NBA Playoffs. They need at least one additional player who can not only make it rain from downtown but is also a high-volume 3-point shooter. Knecht seems to check both boxes.
“In three seasons of Division I college basketball, he made 38.3% of his 3-point attempts, and he was at 39.7% on 6.5 attempts a game this season for the University of Tennessee. He seems to have the ability to not only hit open treys but also contested treys, which is one sign of a very good or great shooter.”
Knecht does things Bronny doesn’t do, and he does them at a high level. It will be hard for Bronny to claim a significant chunk of playing time with Knecht on the Lakers’ roster.
Media outlets are handing out grades for the Lakers’ Bronny pick.
The Los Angeles Lakers have selected Bronny James, the eldest son of superstar LeBron James, with the 55th pick in the 2024 NBA draft. The Lakers made the pick on Thursday. A CBS Sports panel offered a grade for the Lakers’ highly-scrutinized draft pick.
Bronny James is now poised to play alongside his father, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, where they could become the first father-son duo to play in the league at the same time.
Bronny James reacted to being drafted by the Lakers with a post on his Instagram story, saying, “Beyond blessed.”
LeBron has said numerous times that he wants to end his career playing alongside his son, and agent Rich Paul did everything he could to deter any other team from taking him.
Bronny is far from a finished product, but the skills he does have currently translate to the NBA. The CBS Sports HQ crew give its grade for the Lakers selecting Bronny James in the 2024 NBA draft.
Bronny James is not a better, more NBA-ready player than Cam Reddish. That helps explain why the G League will be his 2025 home.
If you think there’s a realistic chance Bronny James will be a regular rotation player for the Los Angeles Lakers in the upcoming NBA season, let’s do the obvious thing. Let’s look at the Lakers’ roster. If Bronny James is to play at least eight to 10 minutes a game at the back end of the Laker bench in a mop-up role — probably the most one could possibly expect from him if he is going to play with the Lakers and not primarily in the G League next season — we have to discern if he has a chance of unseating the players currently on the Lakers’ roster.
After the main rotation players — LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Rui Hachimura, Austin Reaves, D’Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, Gabe Vincent, Christian Wood, and Jalen Hood-Schifino (and we’re aware that trades could be coming, particularly for Russell) — we begin to get into the conversation surrounding the back end of the Lakers’ roster. Jaxson Hayes, Cam Reddish, and Maxwell Lewis have the lowest salaries of the 12 players listed as current Lakers at Spotrac.
Ask yourself: Is Bronny James — right now — better than Jaxson Hayes, Cam Reddish, or Maxwell Lewis? It’s hard if not impossible to say he is. That, right there, gives you a sense of what Bronny James is up against. He will almost certainly spend the vast majority of his time in the G League for the upcoming basketball season.
Also consider this point: The only ways Bronny James might play 20 minutes in any NBA game next season with the Lakers are basically as follows:
if there is an injury epidemic on the team
the Lakers secure their NBA playoff seed in early April, and Bronny plays 25 minutes in Game 81 or 82 while LeBron, AD, Reaves, and the other starters rest up for the playoffs
Plenty of basketball fans and NBA watchers might already know these things, but with a lot of casual sports fans being curious about Bronny James’ Laker career and NBA journey, it’s good to spell out in detail what Bronny is facing.
Let’s be very clear: The G League is almost certain to be Bronny’s main home for the coming pro basketball season. If you haven’t adjusted to that reality, now is the time to do so.
If LeBron James signs a three-year deal with the Lakers and not a two-year deal, that offers a big clue into the plan for Bronny.
Now that Bronny James has been picked by the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA draft, we are all looking for clues about Bronny’s future with the Laker organization and the NBA in general. If Bronny was going to sacrifice a second year of college basketball — and by extension, a chance to be a first-round draft pick in 2025 — it always made sense that his first year of pro ball would be spent in the minor leagues, otherwise known as the G League. Bronny wanted to get into the NBA so he could share some experiences with LeBron James as a Laker teammate, but the tradeoff is that Bronny would need to spend time in the G League before being fully NBA-ready. How LeBron James handles his dealings with the Lakers is a key detail to watch in the larger process of understanding how Bronny’s NBA career will be managed.
We might now have a better, clearer idea of what will happen.
“James has until June 29 to opt in to the final year of his contract with the Lakers or become an unrestricted free agent,” wrote Dave McMenamin. “L.A. is committed to re-signing James and would offer the maximum three-year deal for which James is eligible to take him through his 24th season in the league, sources told ESPN.”
If LeBron James does sign a three-year deal, that tells us LeBron is content to wait two years for Bronny to develop his game to an NBA-ready level. Bronny would have two whole basketball seasons to see if he can hack it in the pros. The third year would be LeBron’s final year as an NBA player, and that year would be the LeBron-Bronny NBA tour, with father and son both playing for the Lakers. Bronny, in Year 3, could be a legitimate teammate with his father — not just in a token appearance as we’re likely to see in these next two seasons, but as a contributing rotational player with the Lakers. Bronny wouldn’t be ready to do that in his first two years of pro ball. LeBron signing a three-year deal gives his son the chance to develop his game in two years so that father and son can both be main attractions for the Lakers in Year 3.
That sure looks like the plan for the Jameses and the Lakers at this point. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s the best way to read the situation in the present moment, from what we can gather.
Don’t expect Bronny James to do anything for the Lakers in the next two years. This is a long-term project, not a quick fix.
The scenario most of us expected has officially come to pass: Bronny James has indeed been taken by the Los Angeles Lakers with the No. 55 pick in the 2024 NBA draft. Now that Bronny is a Laker, we can get past the draft speculation and focus on the truly interesting story: How he develops his professional basketball career.
What is a realistic set of expectations for Bronny James? That’s the first and most important question to ask and explore. If you’re expecting Bronny James to be an instant-impact Year 1 rotation player, you’re not being realistic. This doesn’t mean Bronny isn’t good or can’t be good; it only means that he has not had enough time to develop his game. He came out of college after one year, not two. He frankly could have used a second year of college basketball to develop his game. Is he an NBA-caliber player? Instead of answering yes or no, the best answer is “we don’t know.” Bronny needs time to find the answer for himself. He hasn’t been able to play often enough to give us an answer, for better or worse.
Here’s the blunt truth about Bronny James: We should not try to assign firm expectations to him as an NBA player for the first two seasons of his career. He needs to play two years of G League basketball (at least one and a half) to develop his game. He might get called up by the Lakers for a brief pro appearance here and there, just so he and his dad, LeBron James, can share some special moments on the court, but Bronny has to know that his near-term future will involve G League competition and working on his game.
One year of G League ball should give him a sense of what he will need to adjust to the pro game. The second year of G League play should — if everything goes according to plan — make him an NBA-ready player for his third pro season. That third season could be LeBron’s final season, and a year in which Bronny and LeBron are both full-fledged Laker teammates who enjoy a long season together, touring the full NBA.
Bronny James needs time more than anything else. You can expect a lot from him, but that expectation has to exist in an extended timeline, not in a one-year window.
If Bronny James does play in the NBA summer league with the Lakers, we already have the date and time for his NBA debut.
That didn’t take very long, did it? During the NBA draft — right after Bronny James was selected at pick No. 55 by the Los Angeles Lakers — ESPN revealed its NBA summer league opening-night schedule. Bronny James will very likely play in the summer league to begin polishing and developing his game for the pros. Assuming that he does play with the Lakers’ summer league team, that opening-night summer league game will mark his NBA debut.
ESPN and ESPN Plus will provide television and streaming coverage for the Lakers’ summer league opener against the Houston Rockets on Friday, July 12. The game will start at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time, 4:30 p.m. Pacific time in Las Vegas. Viewers will get their first look at Bronny James in an NBA game with NBA rules. Another summer league game will follow Lakers-Rockets, but you know that Bronny James’ first pro game will be the featured attraction. That’s just two weeks away. The NBA moves quickly, and so does ESPN.
The expected outcome doesn’t always emerge in sports. This time, it did. Bronny James will get to play NBA basketball with his father, LeBron James. The Los Angeles Lakers selected Bronny James with the 55th pick in the 2024 NBA draft. There were no last-minute complications. Bronny entered the draft knowing that while he could have played a second year of college basketball, he could fast-track his career path and be able to share plane flights with his famous father as a Laker teammate. To be sure, Bronny is not expected to be an extended-minute player for the Lakers, but being in the fold with the franchise and his dad will give him continued proximity to LeBron in ways which would not have existed had he stayed in college or been drafted by another NBA team. The plan all along, it seemed, was for Bronny to go at 55 to the Lakers. Bronny, by being drafted, was picked ahead of dozens of other players who could reasonably claim they are better basketball players right now.
The decision by Bronny James to enter the draft might have seemed like a bad one, purely in terms of where Bronny was selected on the draft board. Bronny could have played another year of college hoops and become a first-round pick in 2025. However, in terms of being able to play with his dad and be on the same NBA team as his dad as a draft pick (and not an undrafted free agent), there is plenty for Bronny himself to like about his situation with the Lakers.
Did Bronny James’ future path just change as a result of the Lakers’ unexpected Dalton Knecht pick?
A stunning turn of events gave the Los Angeles Lakers an amazingly unexpected opportunity in the 2024 NBA draft on Wednesday night. Dalton Knecht, widely viewed as a top-10-quality draft pick, slid all the way to No. 17 in the first round. Pat Riley and the Miami Heat passed on him at No. 15. Daryl Morey and the Philadelphia 76ers passed on him at No. 16. The Lakers were able to scoop up Knecht at pick No. 17, a tremendous pick and a remarkable stroke of good fortune for Rob Pelinka, new coach J.J. Redick, and LeBron James. Now, the big question emerges: With the Lakers unexpectedly getting Knecht, a wing player who offers quality shooting, will the NBA franchise still take Bronny James if he is available at pick No. 55 in Thursday’s second round, as most people expect he will be?
Bronny James has become such a point of fascination in this NBA draft because all the details of his situation make him one of the most unusual and exceptional draft-day stories in recent NBA memory. We’ll find out soon enough if Dalton Knecht alters the calculus for the Lakers at the NBA draft.
