NBA Draft 2024: Bronny James, Son of LeBron James, Drafted by Los Angeles Lakers- Eyeing on the Glory

The Los Angeles Lakers—the franchise that his father has played for since 2018—drafted Bronny James on Thursday. Bronny James is the eldest son of the NBA’s all-time scoring leader and four-time champion.

With only three picks left in this year’s draft, Bronny James was selected with the 55th overall pick, much down the second round. LeBron James may become a free agent next week, meaning he might decide to sign with a different team and add more excitement to the move.

The draft move doesn’t guarantee that father and son will actually play in a game together, nor does it even guarantee that Bronny James will be on the Lakers’ roster next season.

But it certainly raises the prospect that it may happen in what would be an NBA first — a father-son on-court duo in the league simultaneously as players.

In the history of the NBA, there have been roughly 100 cases of players entering the league after their fathers were players, although those have always occurred at least five years after the father’s career concluded.

The father-son team is made feasible, however, by LeBron James’ extraordinary longevity. This upcoming season, which will be his 22nd in the NBA, he will tie Vince Carter for the longest tenure as a player ever.

NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum made the announcement, “With the 55th pick in the 2024 NBA draft, the Los Angeles Lakers select Bronny James from the University of Southern California,” marking the official beginning of the 19-year-old’s career. James was born just before the start of his father’s second NBA season.

Bronny James is a guard who measured 6 feet, 1 1/2 inches at the NBA combine despite being listed as 6-foot-4 on Southern California’s roster.

He would then rank among the NBA’s shortest players, but his athleticism and defensive prowess allowed him to be given this chance.

He attended USC for one year as a college basketball player, where he finished the season averaging 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 2.1 assists. His congenital heart abnormality, discovered after he suffered a cardiac collapse during a summer workout, required surgery last year, which prevented him from playing in the first 25 games of the season.

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Bronny James was approved by a panel of doctors to play in the NBA last month. On the second day of the draft, 24 players were selected before Bronny James; nevertheless, for apparent reasons, none of them — not even close — garnered the same level of interest as the No. 55 pick.

Rarely does a guy selected with the 55th overall pick end up drawing a lot of notice. Patty Mills, a guard with the Miami Heat who was taken in 2009 and has scored 7,893 points in 15 seasons, is the greatest 55th pick in NBA history.

Other noteworthy No. 55 selections include E’Twaun Moore, Marc Iavaroni, Mark Blount, and Kenny Gattison. No. 55 overall has never resulted in an NBA All-Star, All-NBA player, All-Rookie team player, or All-Defensive team selection.

Isaiah Wong, the No. 55 pick from last season, scored exactly two points in his first campaign for Indiana. Their NBA lifetime scoring total, when adding up all of the No. 55 selections in history, is 28,364 points, which is more than 12,000 points less than LeBron James‘s total.