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.
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