Bronny James had perhaps his worst moment at Summer League with roughly four minutes remaining in the fourth quarter of Thursday’s win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. With the Los Angeles Lakers down four, James caught a pass from behind the arc and moved before thinking. Rather than try the wide-open triple, he went into attack mode. Unfortunately, he was called for a travel in the process.
Such hesitance wasn’t entirely unpredictable. James has struggled mightily from deep in Las Vegas. His 3-point shooting was in issue in college and high school as well, and it will likely be the primary area in which he needs to improve if he is going to become a productive NBA player. Most rookies facing as much pressure as he is probably would have preferred to try their luck on a drive as well.
Rookies make mistakes. It happens. What matters is how they respond to them. And James, roughly one minute later, responded brilliantly. Handling the ball on the perimeter, Colin Castleton came to set a screen for him. Jaylon Tyson tried to go under that screen, the correct decision when facing a ball-handler with a weak jumper. That left James wide open, but that advantage would only matter if he could punish Tyson for leaving him alone. He did so, stepping back into a clean 3-pointer that cut the Cleveland lead to two and gave him his biggest shot of Summer League thus far.
We don’t need to get carried away here. This single shot isn’t going to be some sort of turning point in James’ career. It’s still going to be an uphill battle for him to develop into a contributing NBA player given his size and the limitations we’ve seen thus far. But it’s something, a sliver of progress in what started out as a nightmarish Summer League. James missed his first 14 3-pointers for the Lakers. He looked overmatched physically when trying to defend bigger perimeter players. He heard an entire news cycle centered around Jaylen Brown questioning his merits as an NBA player. Most Summer League players aren’t dealing with all of these things.
And yet James has now played two reasonably successful games in a row. He’s scored 25 combined points against the Hawks and Cavaliers on 10-of-21 shooting, adding five rebounds, three assists and two blocks on Thursday. He looked like he belonged down the stretch of a close game. It’s going to be a long time before that happens against NBA-caliber competition, if it ever does, but, hey, it’s a start.
James is probably going to spend the majority of his rookie season in the G-League. He might need multiple years of seasoning there before he’s ready for a full-time NBA role. But it’s worth noting that most No. 55 overall picks top out as G-Leaguers anyway. James might be better or he might not be. But right now, he’s more or less where a prospect of his ilk should be. He isn’t stealing the show in Vegas, but he’s not embarrassing himself either. He’s just playing steady, all-around basketball and slowly growing more comfortable in a professional setting. After the start he had in Summer League, that’s more than enough for him and for the Lakers.
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