Everyone in the sports media has a Bronny James take.
Some are nuanced. Then, there’s Rob Parker.
“I think this is the worst decision that has ever happened in professional sports,” Parker said on Fox Sports Radio. “And I’m dead serious when I say that. It changes what the essence of the game has always been, which is about competition. This is what we always talked about, and the reason why you have an NFL where you have essentially 99% of the owners are white, and yet the league is 70% Black.
“Meritocracy is what allowed this to be the case. They didn’t go out and fill their teams with people that look like them because they own the team, and said, ‘I don’t care. I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do, and no one can tell me because I own the team.’ It was about the best people went out there, played the game, and the people who deserved to get jobs, got jobs.
“I heard a lot of people throw nepotism. And there’s plenty of nepotism, and I’ve been critical…It’s wrong. We’ve seen it, especially in the front office. But it ain’t the same as what we’ve seen here, as far as on the field. Someone would have to show me on the field where some guy got his son a spot on a team, or some owner put his nephew on. ‘Oh, just take the last spot in the roster, it doesn’t matter. I want you to be on the team because I own the team.'”
There’s a laundry list of examples that essentially throws a wrench in Parker’s argument.
They include guys like Keljin Blevins on the Portland Trails Blazers (Damian Lillard’s cousin), Chris Smith on the New York Knicks (JR Smith’s young brother) and Dwyane Wade’s son getting drafted by the G-League team his dad partly owns. There are also names like Zoran Dragic, Taylor Griffin, Luke Zeller and Cory Higgins, who have all benefited from who they are related to.
There’s no denying nepotism exists in the NBA across various positions. However, it’s curious why Parker limits it to the front office and coaching roles. We’ve even seen ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski argue in defense of Bronny because nepotism exists across the board. It seems Parker might be trying to turn this into a larger debate about LeBron’s legacy.
“That’s the part I think when LeBron looks at his legacy, that he’ll be leaving the sport in a worse place than he got here,” argued Parker. “And what I mean is he’s opened up a Pandora’s Box now, and I don’t know how you tell people not to do what he just did. His kid by all other scouts — not Rob Parker as a scout — all the scouts say he’s a smaller guard and didn’t have a great year in college. He might’ve made a team. He might’ve been able to be on a team as a non-drafted player and work his way through and all that; he could have.
“But this was like, ‘No, he’s coming to the Lakers. Get out of the way. Don’t draft him.’ This is all about LeBron making this happen. The whole process feels bad and doesn’t feel good. I feel bad for Bronny from the standpoint that people will look at him where if this was on his own merit…I think he would’ve had a better situation or a better chance without having people wear this on him that the only reason he’s here is his dad.
“And people aren’t going to say it. A lot of people aren’t gonna say it publicly because LeBron still has power and is a big name. But I talk to a lot of former players who just to me said that this doesn’t feel right on the way this was handled, all the conversation about t; everybody knew. I told you this months ago that he was going to the Lakers. There was no doubt in my mind at all how this was gonna play out.”
[ Fox Sports Radio ]
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