Jay Bilas offers final assessment of Bronny James minutes before NBA draft

The 2024 NBA draft began just after 8 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday night. Minutes before the draft’s official start — just before 7:50 p.m. Eastern inside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn — ESPN NBA draft analyst and college basketball commentator Jay Bilas offered a final set of remarks on Bronny James.

Bilas emphasized the point that Bronny James went through health problems last year and endured a truncated college basketball season at USC. Those realities limited the amount of time he has been able to spend on the court, training to become a better and more complete player. Skepticism about Bronny is less about how good he is, more about the simple fact that he just hasn’t played a lot of live basketball since leaving high school. He chose to enter the draft now instead of playing a second year of college basketball. In doing so, Bronny limited his draft ceiling. Does that mean he won’t amount to a good NBA player? It’s more a matter of Bronny not being NBA-ready right now. Bilas recognizes this.

On the air for ESPN, just before the draft began, Bilas said Bronny will need “one to two years” in the G League before he is a fully NBA-ready player. A lot of analysts would agree with that view. Now we wait to see if the Lakers take Bronny at No. 55 in the NBA draft.

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