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Welcome to our Lakers Season Preview Series! For the next several weeks, we’ll be writing columns every weekday breaking down the biggest questions we have about every player the Lakers added this offseason. Today, we take a look at Bronny James.
Whether or not he was worth the gamble or not, Bronny James’ original spot on the Lakers was inarguably a result of his father being on the team. That he is on the team heading into the 2025-26 season, though, is a result of no one but himself.
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Multiple seasons of hard work behind the scenes led to Bronny producing in meaningful minutes late in the regular season and in the first round series against the Rockets. Even if nothing else happens in his NBA career, the sequence of him and LeBron cooking the Rockets together will endure.
Even if those playoff minutes also showed how far Bronny has to go, it also instilled enough belief in the Lakers to fend off any potential suitors this summer. As much as he has shown signs of progress, though, the time has come for him to be more than a project and to make good on the team’s investment in him.
What is his best-case scenario?
The years of work, and perhaps being a bit liberated from his father going to the other coast, set Bronny down the path of an impactful role player off the bench. The archetype of player he could become — an athletic point-of-attack defender who can be a connector offensively — fits nicely alongside either Luka Dončić or Austin Reaves.
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However, all we’ve seen are flashes of that type of player, and rarely, if ever, all at once. The best-case scenario of this season sees him take those flashes and turn them into sustainable stretches of play. No longer does it happen once every few games, but happens across multiple games.
One of Bronny’s biggest challenges, though, will be breaking through the rotation. Between Austin, Luka, Collin Sexton and Quentin Grimes, the backcourt already has a lot of minutes accounted for. He’s going to have an uphill battle to get in the rotation, but defense is the easiest way to project how he sets himself apart.
