So the Lakers drafted Bronny James in the 2nd round of the 2024 NBA draft with the 55th pick. If you were one of the persons who made excuses for him being drafted, I think you see the real truth now. He wasn’t ready to be drafted. He wasn’t ready to play in the NBA. He wasn’t ready to stop playing in college. He should have stayed there and developed his game a little more. Quite simply, he wasn’t ready. I admire the James family, Lebron mostly, for being as successful as they are and for putting Bronny in this position to continue taking advantage of the James name. But it looks like Bronny hasn’t been put in the best position for immediate success. Let’s examine.
Some say, the best way to learn how to play in the NBA is to play against NBA competition. Yeah, that’s definitely a great way. However, you have to actually be somewhat close to being ready to compete at that level first. There’s also another saying in sports, especially pro sports. There are levels to this! Bronny skipped a level or two without experiencing success. He wasn’t close yet to being at a professional level of competing. Now, Im going to attempt to give you three reasons why he wasn’t ready.
Reason # 1 – He doesn’t have enough wiggle in his game
I don’t claim to know anything about Bronny’s High School career or his College career for that matter either. However, it’s obvious that he got by on mostly athleticism. We all know he’s a little undersized, at 6’1.75″ , but athleticism, playmaking, shot making and basketball IQ can make up for guys that are undersized. I mean I grew up in the Isiah Thomas & Johns Stockton era. Allen Iverson is a year or two older than I am. Those guys were undersized but they all had at least 3 of those 4 basketball characteristics that a small guard must have. Unfortunately, Bronny only has one or two of those talents right now, athleticism and maybe basketball IQ.
I have only seen him make shots after he makes one quick move. It’s either a drive to the goal or a catch and finish at the rim or a drive to the mid range area where he uses the pull up jump shot. He doen’t have enough wiggle to get his shot off. I haven’t seen enough crossovers or double crossovers or hesitations or quick blow bys. All I’ve seen is he catches the ball and makes one basic move to try to get his shot off. If that doesn’t work, he quickly moves the ball to another teammate. Again, where are the skills to fake one way, drive the other, then crossover to the other hand and then use a step back/while pushing off for a jumpshot? Or the use of the pick and roll effectively to get seperation for either the picking player or himself. He can’t use his athletic ability to just get by guys and score like he could at lower levels. And after that first move gets cut off, what does he have to go to? Nothing. He hasn’t developed any of that stuff yet. He doesn’t have an offensive skillset to be on an NBA court.
Most guys in the Summer league are hungry to put up shots and show their worth. He looks unsure with how to be effective with getting shots off. That’s because he can’t unless he has the help of a skilled teammate getting him open shots. He can’t get shots off without running out on the break for layups and dunks. The skillset, the bag of tricks, the tools in the toolbox, he just hasn’t developed anything to get shots off consistently. He lacks the wiggle.
Reason # 2 – He’s not a reliable shooter
He hasn’t hit a 3-pt shot in 3 summer league games.
Reason # 3 – He hasn’t been allowed to fail
A lot of times failure is the best teacher. Before you learn how to succeed, you must go through some failures, some adversity. When you fail, you have to show resiliency. You have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and learn something new. You have to improve upon whatever got you to this point. Again, I don’t claim to know much about Bronny’s AAU teams, his HS team or his USC team or games. Besides USC, I bet he was always on teams where he didn’t have to do much but run and jump or catch and shoot the ball. And as long as he did that, he was going to be succssful. And because of who his father is, Bronny’s flaws and failures are not as relevant. He can skip steps, skip levels, without actually passing the tests to move up. Think about it.
Example 1– He plays at USC and only scores about 5 pts a game, on a losing team. This is the perfect chance for him to learn from his failures in his first season in college. He could have used this summer to come back as a better, more refined ball player. He could have learned some one-on-one skills. He could have learned to be a more efficient shooter. He played at a higher level of competition in college and he wasn’t successful. He failed to show he was ready to move on to the next level. Was he and his team able to see this as a failure? Did they look at this as an opportunity to see what type of competitive response he could muster this summer and for the next college season? No! Instead, he was influenced to participate in the NBA draft combine.
Example 2 – He goes to the NBA draft combine ranked as the 88th best player there, meaning he most likely wouldn’t get drafted. The NBA combine workouts and scrimmages are a great way for NBA general managers and scouts to assess player’s talents and let them know what they need to work on and get better at. The players, Bronny in this case, would then take that information, go work on it in the summer and apply it to their next college season. When a player is successful at using that information to improve their game, they become more appealing to GMs the following season. They become more draftable. But after the combine workouts, Bronny somehow rose up the draft board 34 freaking spots to the 54th best player there. Not 10 or 15 spots, but 34 spots, as if he were lighing it up out there. If the analysts and ranking experts hadn’t of been influenced to move him up to 54th, this would have been another chance for him to fail. Another chance for basketball adversity. Another chance to learn and show resilency. Did that happen? Nope. I guess the one game where he scored 13 pts was an epic game, a real eye opener to scouts around the league. Yeah, ok, sure.
Example 3 – If no team had drafted Bronny, he would be hungry as hec to prove he belongs. But this argument is a moot point. We all knew he was getting drafted when his draft stock shot up and he stayed in the draft. The fix was already in.
Example 4 – Bronny gets a guaranteed contract before he even steps foot on the summer league floor. Really? A guaranteed contract for 7.9 mill? What? It didn’t matter how bad he was shooting out there or the fact that he only took 3 shots as a starter in his 2nd Summer league game. He doesn’t have to worry about it. He’s set up not to experience any percieved failures. Or you could say he’s insulated and sheltered from failures right now on the basketball court.
When is he ever going to have to go in the lab and come out with some new stuff if it’s never shown to him that he’s failed? When is he going to have to show basketball resilience and a much better skillset? When will he actually have to earn an NBA spot and an NBA contract?
This could be setting this young guy back. He’s been allowed to skip the steps. When will he have to go through failure. I don’t know. I hope it turns out well for the Lakers but right now it isn’t looking good. Bronny just wasn’t ready and I’m going to leave it at that.