The lead up to and the aftermath of the Los Angeles Lakers selecting Bronny James has included no shortage of analysis from those who cover the league.
No one else, however, has the same perspective that Brian Windhorst does, having covered James’ father — who you might be aware is NBA megastar LeBron James — since his high school career.
That included the early days of the older James’ own NBA career, which Windhorst covered as the Cleveland Cavaliers’ beat writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer . And that allowed the now-ESPN senior writer to provide some insight on LeBron’s mindset as a father, dating back to the very day that Bronny was born.
“The night that Bronny was born, back in October of 2004, LeBron had to leave training camp. So I did an interview with him, he was explaining why he was leaving training camp. It was obviously a personal matter, but he wanted to explain why,” Windhorst said on Friday’s episode of Get Up . “I remember talking to him about becoming a father that night. Savannah was literally going to be induced. He was going to the hospital basically from the gym. And he talked about giving Bronny his name. He was going to give him his name because he wanted to have the pressure of delivering as a father. He wanted to be connected with his son, because LeBron’s own father was not a part of his life.
“He told me in that moment, I can still remember having that conversation with him as just a 19-year-old saying that he didn’t want [Bronny] to feel the same way without a father that he didn’t have.”
Windhorst noted that LeBron later regretted the decision to give his oldest son his name because of the expectations it led to, which is a reason why he goes by “Bronny” now. He also conveniently left out that James later joked with reporters that he had named his first child “Brian Windhorst James” after Bronny was born.
Windhorst proceeded to draw on his experience covering the James family to explain what Thursday meant to them, especially less than one year removed from Bronny suffering cardiac arrest during a practice at USC.
“This was an incredible, circular moment,” Windhorst said. “As I was watching the video of when Bronny was drafted, and I see Savannah bringing him the Lakers hat and then wiping tears away. You have to realize, regardless of what you think of the father-son thing or the LeBron thing and whatever, 11 months ago, Savannah and LeBron got a phone call that their son’s heart had stopped during a practice. And that is such an emotional moment and because they were so private about it and because it happened in the offseason or whatever, I don’t think maybe people grasped what that meant.
“For 11 months later, for them to be celebrating him being drafted into the NBA — it doesn’t really matter what you feel about “deserving” or whatever his his rating or whether he should be the 55th pick or whatever — that fact, how can you not connect on that level? If you can’t connect on a father-son level, especially for somebody who didn’t have a father growing up and how he wanted to change that, you can at least connect on the level that you almost lost your son less than a year ago and now he’s achieving on this. Frankly, anything else beyond that is just filling time when you consider those things in my view.”
By this point, it’s been well established that Windhorst is one of ESPN’s best and most versatile NBA reporters/personalities . And his ability to draw on more than 20 years of experience covering one of the best players of all time is one of the biggest reasons why.
[ Get Up ]
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