LAS VEGAS – Among the things that always strike you when the NBA gathers here every July for two weeks of kiln-like heat, goose-bump raising air conditioning and the odd pleasure of getting lost in the weird dim light of endless casinos – only on your way to a practice court in a hotel ballroom, mind you – is how good players who have almost no chance of ever playing in the league’s best basketball league actually are.
Every team’s Summer League roster is crammed with players-of-the-year in conference X, Y or Z, NCAA champions, bounce-around pros and recent draft picks trying to prove their worth. There are agile seven-footers that can rock rims and point guards that can squeeze through cracks in a defence like water through a colander. Only a fraction of them will ever play in an NBA game, let alone have a meaningful career.
The NBA is limited to the top 450 players in the world, which is a significant element of its global appeal: it’s just a really tough league to crack, and the handful of athletes good enough to make it – let alone rise to the top of it – are as rare as any slim strain of genius in any other field.
At Summer League, you get to watch up close hundreds of the next best wave of basketball players in the world demonstrate – for the most part – why they can’t make the leap. It’s survival of the fittest, smartest, toughest, luckiest and those who can shoot threes.
It’s not clear that Bronny James is good enough to survive as an NBA player. At 19 years old, he’s certainly not ready, but he is going to get every chance with the Los Angeles Lakers, based on his family ties – and perhaps because of that, every step, stumble or wobble of his progress will be scrutinized, catalogued, talk showed and Tik-Tokked.
That’s what happens you get drafted by the NBA’s ultimate glamour franchise, which also happens to employ your dad, LeBron James, arguably the best and/or most famous basketball player that’s ever lived, and when you get signed to a four-year, $8-million contract, a benefit almost unheard for players taken that low (55th overall) in the draft.
The oldest son of LeBron James made his Vegas NBA Summer League debut Friday in front of a packed house at Thomas and Mack Center, the crowd overwhelmingly pro-Laker and thus pro-Bronny.
It didn’t go very well. The Lakers got soundly thumped, 99-80, by the Houston Rockets, and James struggled.
He finished with eight points on 3-of-14 shooting, missed all eight of the threes he took and had five rebounds, two steals and three turnovers without recording an assist. He didn’t impact the game in any meaningful way, struggling with his ball-handling and appearing a step behind with his decision making.
“I just watch the film focusing on the things I always do, things I should focus on, always focusing on playing as hard as I can,” James said when asked how evaluates his own performance.
How he plays or what he needs to work on would hardly matter if his last name was Jones, his father an electrician and he was on the Lakers Summer League team as last-minute roster filler.
But he’s going to have roster spot on the real Lakers this season, and mainly because his father is an NBA legend.
That alone might make James a reasonable choice to crack the NBA long term, but sports don’t work like that. Eventually, advantage has to give way to production. Quite literally, ball don’t lie.
Still, for all the energy that goes into determining whose combination of skills, smarts and athleticism will coalesce into NBA-level play, it’s still far more art than science. There’s plenty of reasons to expect that James will one day be an NBA player. He’s fantastically athletic, is purported to have good feel for the game, which you might expect, given his bloodlines, and is touted as hard worker who is a good bet to get the most out of his talent. At the very least – presuming his can turn himself into a league average or better three-point shooter – the hope is he can carve out a career as a ‘three-and-D’ specialist.
But there’s plenty of reasons to expect he won’t. There was no chance he would have been drafted – let alone signed to this kind of deal – if he wasn’t the son of LeBron. In his first and only college season at USC, he averaged 4.8 points and shot 36.6 per cent from the floor.
Not surprisingly against a level of competition considerably better than college but several rungs below the NBA, James looked very much the struggling rookie Friday. His only highlight was a sneaky dunk on the fast break in the first quarter, but it was slim pickings after that.
Each time he touched the ball there was a buzz of anticipation throughout the arena, but James never rewarded it. He missed the three-pointers he did take – all wide open – pretty badly; none of them looked promising coming out of his hand. He got picked clean off the dribble in his own backcourt, giving up an uncontested lay-up to the Rockets. He had another shaky sequence where he made one pass a beat late where the Rockets stole it only to bumble it, so the Lakers got it back. James then rifled another pass late and that also got deflected away .
At the start of the third quarter, he was wide open for a kickout three, passed up the shot to drive into traffic and turned the ball over. He missed an alley-oop on the fast break and then fumbled another play when he tried to beat a close-out only to bobble the catch, forcing him to kill his dribble and the advantage.
He showed some spark defensively, especially pressuring the ball, earning a steal with a good read closing the gap on a pick-and-roll. His best offensive play was an explosive left-handed drive and right-handed finish. Both came in the fourth quarter.
Is this level of scrutiny reasonable for the 55th pick in the draft? Probably not, but it is the path chosen. Another year in school might have served James well. Taking an opportunity on a two-way deal as an undrafted free agent would have toned down expectations. Even signing a two-way deal with the Lakers – and thus not taking up a roster spot – would have made things a little easier, potentially. But those weren’t the choices made, and James will inevitably have his every move dissected.
The best son of an accomplished player on the floor was Reed Sheppard, the former University of Kentucky star whose father Jeff won a national championship at UK, where his mother Stacey is among the all-time leading scorers with the women’s program.
The younger Sheppard was the third overall pick of the Rockets after one year at Kentucky and finished with 23 points and five assists and shot four-of-six from three, looking like he was a step ahead of the game every minute he was on the floor.
Sheppard and James have been playing against each other in summer basketball since they were youngsters, but the expectations and visibility are different now. Making the leap to the NBA is one of the most difficult things to do in sports, though some make it look easier than others.
Bronny James is getting his shot, and for better or worse, everyone is watching.
