The Inside Story of How Bronny Got the Lakers Gig

Opening night for the 2024–25 season had arrived, and the Lakers looked great. The defense was aggressive and on point. The new offense installed by Redick—featuring more ball and player movement—created easy looks. Davis was dominating on both ends.

Around the midway mark of the second quarter, LeBron, having been subbed out for a brief break, found a seat on the bench alongside a new teammate.

“You about ready?” he asked.

The teammate nodded.

“You see the intensity, right?” LeBron asked.

The teammate nodded some more.

“Just play carefree, though,” LeBron said.

The teammate remained silent.

“Don’t worry about mistakes,” LeBron added. “Just go out and play hard.”

The two watched the next three minutes of action side by side. Seated across the court were Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr., the first and only father-son duo ever to play in a Major League Baseball game together. LeBron’s seventeen- year- old son, Bryce, and his ten-year-old daughter, Zhuri, sat on the baseline. LeBron’s wife, Savannah, watched from the stands.

With just over four minutes left in the half, LeBron and the teammate popped out of their seats. An energy surged through the arena. The clock stopped at 4:00. Both players shed their warm- up shirts. The crowd cheered. Thousands of phones were lifted into the air.

Together, LeBron and the son who shared his name walked onto the court.

In February 2022, LeBron returned to Cleveland for the NBA All-Star Game. This was Westbrook’s first season with the Lakers, and, desperate for the Lakers to make a move, LeBron had elected to put some pressure on Pelinka. “I don’t play mid- level basketball,” he told The Athletic’s Jason Lloyd, after saying that he was open to the idea of one day returning to the Cavaliers. But, he told Lloyd, there was one thing he was willing to prioritize more than winning.

“My last year will be played with my son,” he said. “Wherever Bronny is at, that’s where I’ll be. I would do whatever it takes to play with my son for one year.”

Twenty years earlier, LeBron had met a girl from a rival high school. Soon after, he took her to an Outback Steakhouse for a date. In October 2004, the beginning of LeBron’s second NBA season, Savannah Brinson gave birth to the couple’s first child, a boy. LeBron had a name ready to go.

“When I was younger, I didn’t have a dad,” he later said. “So my whole thing was when I have a kid, not only is he gonna be a junior, I’m gonna do everything that this man didn’t do.”

Eventually, LeBron James Jr. started going by Bronny. Like his father, Bronny loved basketball, and LeBron watched Bronny play as much as he could. When at the games, he’d celebrate Bronny’s plays by leaping out of his seat. Sometimes he’d join Bronny’s team in layup lines. Sometimes he’d get into good-natured arguments with the parents of opponents. The footage often went viral. Those who disliked LeBron would hold these clips up as proof that he was a self- centered, attentioncraving phony. But many saw them as something else: a man who had no relationship with his own father delighting in the opportunity to be one himself.

Savannah gave birth to LeBron’s second son in June 2007. The couple married in September 2013, and their daughter was born one year later. After LeBron signed with the Lakers, the whole family moved to LA. Bronny enrolled at Sierra Canyon, a prestigious private school with an elite basketball program. He wasn’t a star, but he flashed enough promise for LeBron to begin thinking about a possible NBA future. During the Lakers’ unofficial pre-bubble workouts in 2020, he brought Bronny to train with him and his teammates. Bronny went through all the drills and played in the scrimmages. “If he messed up or made a mistake, Bron would be like, ‘They’re not gonna play with you,’” Talen Horton-Tucker said. “He didn’t want anyone taking it easy on him, either.” No one did, and Bronny held his own. “It didn’t feel like a Make-A-Wish kid or anything,” recalled an attendee. “He fit in.” During one run, Bronny caught an outlet pass and spotted LeBron streaking toward the hoop, pointing toward the sky. Bronny fired a lob from near halfcourt. LeBron caught the ball in the air and slammed down a reverse dunk.

LeBron was still chasing championships. And he still hoped to pass Kareem’s scoring record. But he was now ready to add two new items to his list of goals.

The first was guiding his son to the NBA. The second was becoming the first NBA player to share the court with his son. Two years later, during that All- Star weekend in Cleveland, he decided that it was time to go public. “I put it in the air because I like to talk to the basketball gods out there and see if things can come to fruition,” LeBron later told Sports Illustrated ’s Chris Ballard. “I’ve always set out goals in my career, talked to the basketball gods, and they’ve listened to all of them. Hopefully they can listen to this last one, too.”

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LeBron’s quote to The Athletic catapulted Bronny into the spotlight, and by his senior year, the hype had reached overdrive. LeBron and Savannah didn’t exactly embrace it, but they didn’t pull Bronny out of the spotlight, either. Their strategy was to do what LeBron had done throughout the back half of his career: Use the media as a tool but try to control the message. Uninterrupted, LeBron’s content company, produced a documentary about the Sierra Canyon basketball team, and the James family had full creative control. Unlike his teammates, Bronny never gave interviews; any reporter who approached was shooed away by a security guard employed by the family. Still, everyone on the team and around it loved him.

“If I had another son, I’d want that son to be like Bronny,” Ed Estavan, a Sierra Canyon assistant coach and the head of Bronny’s AAU team, said.

Bronny’s game mirrored his personality. He was unassuming, selfless, and content in a supporting role. He loved playing defense. He loved passing the ball. “A lot of times he was too passive,” Luca Evans, who covered Bronny at Sierra Canyon for the Los Angeles Times, said. “The hype off his name is so contrary to how he plays.” Everything about Bronny—from his game to his personality—was quiet and understated.

The only time that ever changed was when LeBron stepped in. “Man Bronny definitely better than some of these cats I’ve been watching on league pass today,” LeBron tweeted in March 2023, near the end of Bronny’s senior year of high school. “Shit lightweight hilarious.”

At that point, few around the NBA agreed. Scouts and analysts liked Bronny’s game and appreciated how, despite growing up in a fishbowl, he appeared to be a pretty normal, humble, even- keeled teenager. But in the eyes of most evaluators— the lone exception being ESPN’s Jonathan Givony, who, in a February 2023 mock draft projected him as a top-10 pick— Bronny was nothing more than a borderline draft pick.

In May 2023, Bronny accepted a scholarship to USC. The family’s plan was for him to play one season and then declare for the 2024 NBA draft. Whether or not the rest of the world believed Bronny was ready didn’t matter. To LeBron, there was no doubt.

All that got pushed to the back burner on one July morning. While doing some cardio drills in the USC gym, Bronny blacked out and fell to the floor. He had suffered cardiac arrest. Trainers performed CPR, and an ambulance rushed Bronny to the hospital. He was later diagnosed with a congenital heart defect.

Bronny returned to the court in January but struggled finding his footing, averaging just 4.8 points off the bench. People close to him pointed to the cardiac episode he’d suffered over the summer, and many talent evaluators were sympathetic to the impact of suffering such a traumatic event. But the reality remained that Bronny was an undersized wing shooting an ugly 26.7 percent from deep. It wasn’t that scouts and analysts were rooting against him. They just didn’t see him becoming a legitimate NBA player. LeBron, however, remained resolute. “He could play for us right now, easy,” he told Austin Reaves after one game in January, loud enough for all the reporters in the locker room to hear.

As the 2024 draft approached, Klutch Sports, the agency that was repping Bronny, got to work. The good news was that LeBron and Kluch weren’t the only ones interested in seeing Bronny wear a Lakers uniform. As the Bronny storyline had picked up steam over the previous year, Jeanie spoke often in public about how she remembered watching a hockey game as a teenager featuring her family’s LA Kings and the Hartford Whalers. That night, the Whalers put out a lineup featuring the future Hall of Famer Gordie Howe and one of his sons. “It was just one of those great moments and a great thing to watch,” Jeanie said on The Rich Eisen Show in October 2022.

The Lakers weren’t going to waste their first-round pick on Bronny, but they also owned pick No. 55. Players selected there rarely made the NBA. Maybe Bronny could defy the odds; if not, the Lakers would still make history and, at the same time, appease LeBron, who had a player option.

In the meantime, Klutch was doing everything it could to push Bronny to the Lakers. When speaking with other teams, Rich Paul insisted that Bronny was a first- round talent. When asked whether Bronny would be open to spending time in the G League, he would say yes but qualify that by adding that only when the NBA team had a day off. All of it seemed to be a way of scaring off other potential suitors.

Later, Paul appeared to double down on this approach. Former Warriors GM Bob Myers, who was working the draft for ESPN, shared on air that Paul had been telling inquiring teams, If you take him, he’s going to play in Australia.

No one knew whether Paul was bluffing. But based on his threats, no team was willing to draft Bronny hoping LeBron would leave the Lakers to join him.

The 54th pick was announced. The Lakers were now on the clock. Pelinka, seated next to Redick, called Paul, who put Bronny on the phone.

“Bronny, you got Rob Pelinka here, Coach Redick,” he said. “I think first and foremost, you’ve worked incredibly hard, man. You’ve put in a ton of work…that means a lot to us.

“I think second to that, you’re a player of high character, and a person of high character, and that is valued at the Lakers. And so, it’s important for Coach Redick and I to let you know that those qualities really stand out. And so, the Lakers are gonna draft you with the 55th pick in the draft, and I just wanted to let you know.”

Redick leaned over.

“Bronny, this is JJ. I just wanted to say congrats, man. Your hard work has paid off, you’re gonna have a long NBA career, and I can’t wait to coach you, man. Congrats.”

“Thank you, Coach,” Bronny said. “Appreciate it, Coach.”

“We’ll see you soon, Bronny,” Pelinka said. “The work begins.”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

Pelinka hung up. Everyone in the room applauded.

After hearing NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum announce the pick on TV, LeBron’s family and closest friends, watching together in Manhattan, did the same. Savannah handed Bronny a Lakers hat. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

One week later, LeBron, after declining his player option, signed a new one-plus-one deal with the Lakers.

During training camp, LeBron looked happier than he had in years. He made Bronny wear a holographic backpack as part of the team’s rookie hazing. After practices, he and Bronny worked together, getting up extra shots.

“Just pure joy, to be honest,” LeBron told reporters in September. “To be able to come to work every day, put in the hard work with your son every day and see him continue to grow.”

LeBron and the Lakers decided that the best course of action would be to have him and Bronny play together in the first game of the season and then move on. The NBA, recognizing the magnitude of the moment—and level of interest in the LeBron-Bronny storyline—slotted the Lakers onto its opening-night schedule, which featured two games on national TV. The evening started with the Celtics raising a banner representing title No. 18, which they had won in June, breaking their tie with the Lakers, to the rafters. They then throttled the Knicks, 132–109. In a stark contrast, the Lakers were on TV for a reason that had nothing to do with winning. And yet, like so many other nights throughout NBA history, the spotlight belonged to them. (When LeBron and Bronny entered the game, TNT cameras panned over to Bryce to show his reaction. He looked up, smiled, and then, seemingly unimpressed by his dad and older brother doing something literally no one in history had ever done before, returned to scrolling on his phone.)

On Bronny’s first possession, the Timberwolves set a screen to isolate him on Julius Randle; Randle backed him into the paint and buried a jumper. On the other end of the court, Bronny missed a tip-in chance and a catch-and-shoot three off a feed from his dad. After two and a half minutes of action, Redick subbed Bronny out. The highlight of the stint had been LeBron beating his man backdoor on the baseline for a thunderous, one-handed slam, a mind-boggling feat, considering the dunk was thrown down by someone so old that his son was on the court.

In the locker room after the game—a 110-103 Lakers victory—the players doused Redick in water to celebrate his first career win. The room had quieted by the time the media was let in, but the mood remained upbeat. Davis and LeBron talked football with a group of reporters. The Minnesota vikings were coming to LA, and LeBron said he was thinking about going to the game. “So I can see [Justin] Jefferson,” he said, referring to the team’s star wide receiver. He talked about how Usher had recently held a concert at the nearby Intuit Dome. ESPN’s Malika Andrews mentioned that Billy Joel had performed there, too.

“Hell nah!” LeBron said. “I ain’t listening to no Billy Joel.”

Ta’Nisha Cooper, the Lakers flack, came by to ask LeBron which family photos the team could post from its official social media accounts.

“Yeah, that’s beautiful,” LeBron said, looking at one.

“What about the one with Savannah?” she asked.

“You have to ask her,” he said.

A few stalls over, Bronny was getting dressed. He and his father didn’t look at each other until it was time to head to the media room for their postgame press conference.

Bronny followed LeBron out.

Speaking to reporters, LeBron tried putting the evening’s emotions into words. He talked about how special it was to begin his day by wishing his daughter a happy tenth birthday before she went to school; and how incredible it was to then come in to work and see his son; and how the moment that he and Bronny checked in together would be one he’d never forget, “no matter how my memory may fade as I get older”; and how incredible it was for a day featuring all that to then also end with a win.

“Everything was just great today,” LeBron said. “Everything.”

From A HOLLYWOOD ENDING: The Dreams and Drama of the Lebron Lakers by Yaron Weitzman, to be published on October 21, 2025 by The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Yaron Weitzman.

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