NBA Rumors: Bronny James Set to Only Play in Home G League Games for South Bay Lakers
Fresh off making his G League debut with the South Bay Lakers on Saturday night, Bronny James is only going to be a part-time player for the club going forward.
On the latest episode of The Hoop Collective Podcast (starts at 23:45 mark), ESPN’s Brian Windhorst and Dave McMenamin explained that James will only play in home games for the G League club.
“I’m gonna apply the brakes on my ‘everything’s fine on the Bronny front’ with this thing that’s now happening,” Windhorst said. “Which is that from my understanding, he’s only gonna play in the South Bay Lakers’ home games.”
McMenamin did say that based on a conversation he had with South Bay Lakers president Joey Buss, there is some flexibility about James’ usage depending on how many players they might have available on a given night.
“So I agree with your assessment of the situation,” McMenamin said. “I will say that I did interview Joey Buss, the CEO and the president of South Bay Lakers, at the game Saturday against Utah or Salt Lake City Stars about that, how Bronny’s time will be managed. And on the record, he said that we’re gonna take everything into consideration. If there are times where we’re down on bodies, that could factor into the, injuries could factor into where he’s assigned, where the schedule is, the amount of games in a certain week for South Bay versus the amount of games for the Lakers.
“So on the record, the Lakers have not said that, you know, this notion that he definitively will be prioritizing Laker road games over wherever the South Bay Lakers are playing. We have to say that.”
This isn’t a total surprise. When the Los Angeles Lakers assigned James to the G League on Nov. 7, ESPN’s reported that the plan was for him to play only in “only G League home games as he shuttles between the Lakers and South Bay.”
Lakers head coach JJ Redick on Oct. 25 that the 20-year-old would be shuttling between the NBA club and G League after their first road trip of the regular season.
That allowed the Lakers to accomplish two things with James. He made his NBA debut playing with his father, LeBron James, in the season opener on Oct. 22 against the Minnesota Timberwolves. They became the first father-son duo to play together in an NBA game.
The road trip allowed Bronny to get playing time when the Lakers visited the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team his father played for when he was born in 2004 and spent 11 seasons with across two stints, on Oct. 30.
Those were the first two games that James played. He would end up seeing time in four more games before being assigned to South Bay. The USC alum scored six points, grabbed three rebounds, dished out four assists and had two steals in his G League debut on Saturday.
South Bay’s longest streak of road games is six, but it’s stretched out over four weeks. Its matchups include games against the Valley Suns on Dec. 12-13, Cleveland Charge on Dec. 27-28 and Mexico City Capitanes on Jan. 3-4.
South Bay’s next game is against the Santa Cruz Warriors on Friday in Santa Cruz. It will return home to take on the Stockton Kings on Sunday.