LeBron James Gets Brutally Honest About Goals For Bronny James In NBA Summer League

With the NBA Draft having come and gone, fans are now all tuned into the NBA Summer League.

As we are prone to doing every year, fans are attempting to determine if a player will be a superstar based on a glorified pickup game with players who may not even know each other's names. On Saturday, NBA fans all had their eyes on the Los Angeles Lakers-Sacramento Kings matchup in the California Classic to look out for one player in particular: Bronny James.

The eldest son of NBA legend and current Los Angeles Lakers forward, LeBron James, made his first start of the summer league alongside fellow draftee Dalton Knecht. The two both struggled to get their shots to fall, but they did have some bright moments.

James finished the game with just four points on 2-of-9 shooting from the field while missing all three of his shots from deep. He did, however, grab a nice steal and hit a step-back jumper that flashed what most people were interested in when it came to him: defense and shooting.

Bronny didn't "light it up" by any means, but as explained by his father—who is preparing for the Olympics—the summer league is all about getting experience.

James emphasized just how meaningless the results of summer league games are. And more so, he highlighted the importance of someone like Bronny getting all the reps possible, which ultimately is his goal for his son this summer.

“I just hope for [him to get] his feet wet in the NBA—the pace of the game, the speed of the game, the physicality of the game,” James told the La Times after Team USA practice. “But what he does in the California Classic and Summer League, it doesn’t matter if he plays well and it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t play well. I just want him to continue to grow. Practices, film sessions, his individual workouts.

“You can’t take anything stat-wise from the California Classic and Summer League and bring it once the season starts. The only thing that matters is him getting better and stacking days.”

For the younger James, if he is to have a role on the Lakers in the NBA, he will need to master the craft of being a knockdown shooter and tenacious defender—something that ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski revealed he will have plenty of time to do so in the 2024 G League.

"What the Lakers' expectations are is that he'll largely be a G League player like almost any 19-year-old player coming into the league drafted in the second round," Wojnarowski said on SportsCenter. "I think ultimately what you'll probably see is Bronny James in the first week of the season on the court with his father in a very...I don't want to call it ceremonial, but the eyes of the world will be on that.

"They'll do that the first week of the season, but there's no expectation [that] Bronny James is going to be in the Lakers rotation. He'll spend a lot of his time playing with their G League team, which shares a practice facility with the Lakers."

As for Knecht, James offered some major praise for the Lakers' first-round pick and what he did at Tennessee.

"Dalton, besides Bronny, was my favorite player in college basketball,” James said.

Both Knecht and the younger James will return to action in the California Classic on Sunday when they take on the Golden State Warriors.

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