Bronny James endured a lot of abuse during his rookie season in the NBA. As a second-round pick, it’s not like he could be expected to come in and contribute to a team right from the word go. Yet, criticism of Bronny was loud and constant due to his dad being one of the greatest players in history.
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Bronny took his lumps, but he also made plenty of progress as a player as he shuttled back and forth from the G League to the NBA. He’s still not anywhere close to being a major contributor on a good team. However, he showed glimpses that he could eventually be a rotation player thanks to his length and athleticism, especially on defense.
To his credit, Bronny tuned out the haters and simply put his head down and worked. That couldn’t have been easy for a 20-year-old. As loud as Bronny’s critics were, Gilbert Arenas believes that he would have had even more to deal with if he’d been drafted by anyone else but his dad’s team.
“The only way LeBron can protect his son from all elements of everything is if he’s in-house,” Arenas claimed. “If he’s in-house, he can control the outcome a lot better.”
LeBron had long expressed his desire to share an NBA court with his son. That dream did come to fruition in Bronny’s debut. And we did see how protective he was as a father when he feuded with Stephen A. Smith over the way the broadcaster had spoken about Bronny.
The Lakers are pretty much Luka Doncic’s team, now that he’s signed a three-year, $165 million extension. Luka is the future, but LeBron is still just as important to the Lakers’ present.
So, Arenas is right when he says that LeBron can help control the narrative around his son better if he’s in purple and gold with him than if he had gone to another team.
“He has more dictatorship with the Lakers,” Arenas said of LeBron. “[Bronny] going to another team; he don’t have no control over those GMs, over those players, over the media at that point. So if they wanna say, ‘This n**** terrible,’ there’s nothing he can do about it.”
Bronny was going to be a lightning rod for criticism just due to his famous last name, but the fact that his dad’s team is the one that drafted him in a move that screamed nepotism really pushed some critics over the edge. Not only was Bronny criticized, but LeBron was as well for ‘forcing’ the Lakers to draft his son.
Arenas says that those critics are missing the point. “They’re only looking at one side of it,” he said.
“They’re only looking at the backlash that he got drafted to the Lakers, but don’t realize that if that same kid was drafted somewhere else, if he was drafted to the New York Knicks, what do you think that media and fanbase would have done to him every time he got in the game and did something?” Added Arenas.
If Bronny can continue to make progress in his sophomore season, the criticism will die down, and eventually he’ll be judged fairly on his own merits. If and when LeBron retires (a big if with how good he’s continued to be into his 40s), then Bronny will truly be free to be his own player.
