Part plan, part pipe dream, Lakers star LeBron James and oldest son Bronny became the first father and son to share an NBA court together — a milestone celebrating the elder James’ longevity and the younger James’ resilience.
The two players walked to the scorer’s table together with four minutes left in the second quarter Tuesday night in the season opener against Minnesota at Crypto.com Arena, making history when father and son checked into the game. They played just less than three minutes together with Bronny James missing his only field goal attempt. It hardly mattered.
“Obviously, this is the first time in this beautiful history of the NBA that has ever happened. A father (and) son has been on the same floor, let alone be on the same team, to be able to grace the floor together,” LeBron James said. “So that was just, I talked about it years and years ago and for this moment to come, it’s pretty cool. I don’t know that it’s actually going to hit the both of us for a little minute where we really get to sit back and be like, ‘Oh, sheesh, that was pretty, that’s pretty crazy.’”
Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr., the first father and son to play on the same team in Major League Baseball, attended the game. Hockey legend Gordie Howe and MLB Hall of Famer Tim Raines also played with their children as teammates on the highest professional levels.
It was just a sliver on a night when the Lakers opened their season and JJ Redick’s tenure as head coach with forceful intention, Anthony Davis leading them in a 110-103 opening night win.
It’s the Lakers’ first win on opening night since 2016.
Davis had 36 points, 16 rebounds, four assists and three blocked shots, attacking Minnesota center Rudy Gobert with a combination of speed, skill and force.
The Lakers used a second-quarter run to build a 19-point lead before each of their starters had a hand in holding Minnesota off in the fourth.
Austin Reaves grabbed nine rebounds, Rui Hachimura had 18 points and D’Angelo Russell helped settle the Lakers in during a stretch in the fourth quarter when he scored on one floater and threw a pair of lobs for three consecutive scores.
Fittingly, James’ first three-pointer of the game iced the win — ending a night when the team made only five of 30 shots from deep. He opened his 22nd season with 16 points.
LeBron James set the historic moment in motion in 2018 when he set the goal of playing with his oldest son as a finish-line moment. Two years later, he said playing with Bronny on the same team would be a “dream.”
This year at the NBA draft, it became reality.
The Lakers used the 55th pick to select Bronny James despite an underwhelming first season at USC where he averaged 4.8 points per game.
James, though, didn’t debut for the Trojans until Dec. 10 because of a near-death ordeal during a summer workout on USC’s campus. James went into cardiac arrest and lost consciousness on July 25, 2023. USC athletic trainers used life-saving measures, including a defibrillator. He would later undergo surgery to correct a congenital heart defect.
“When he’s able to grace an NBA floor, if that’s tonight or whenever the case may be, it’ll be another one of those moments just to know the adversity that he went through,” LeBron James said Tuesday morning. “I’ve had a couple of family members that have had heart surgeries. Some of them older, some of them younger. And to know how long it kind of takes to get back to yourself, to see him be able to play in a college Division I game the same year that he had heart surgery was, like, a ‘wow’ moment.
“And I knew that at that moment that there really was going to be nothing to stop him from getting to this — to anything that he wants to do. And he wanted to continue to play basketball.”
Before the game Tuesday, Nike released a commercial where James filled Bronny’s car with Fruity Pebbles cereal in a bit of rookie hazing.
“Thank God that wasn’t my car,” Bronny James said.
“He has multiple cars now. He opened that one and then got in another one,” LeBron quipped after.
The two played four minutes together during one of the Lakers’ six preseason games, a moment that left LeBron James amazed.
“We stood next to each other and I kinda looked at him, and it was just like, ‘Is this The Matrix or something?’” he said. “It just didn’t feel real.”
Postgame, Bronny James — who struggled for most of the preseason — downplayed it.
“I just got out there and it felt like a normal game with my teammate to be honest,” Bronny James said.
But as the moment approached, especially considering the adversity he dealt with 2023, Bronny James’ NBA debut was more than just another game.
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s gonna be insane.”
And — to make it even better — the Lakers got a win.
“We still had a job to do when we checked in. We wasn’t trying to make it a circus. We wasn’t trying to make it about us,” LeBron James said. “We wanted to make it about the team, for us to go out there and continue to play the game, the brand of basketball that the coaching staff and our teammates wanted us to play. We kept that. We kept the main thing while we was on the floor. And that was good for all of us.”
