Bronny to begin G League assignment after Lakers upcoming road trip
With the G League season set to begin, Bronny James will start his shuttling between the South Bay and Los Angeles Lakers.
Bronny James’ rookie season was always going to feature a heavy amount of play for the South Bay Lakers, even after making his NBA debut alongside his father in the team’s season-opener.
Now, with the G League season set to start, that shuttle between the parent team and South Bay will begin.
If this feels like a non-story, that’s because it is. And that’s not my words, those were head coach JJ Redick’s words pregame before the Lakers’ matchups with the Suns.
Earlier on Friday, Dave McMenamin of ESPN released a report that effectively amounted to revealing the G League season is starting. Here’s the most notable part from that piece.
Los Angeles Lakers rookie Bronny James is expected to travel on the team’s upcoming road trip from Oct. 28-Nov. 6 and then begin shuttling between the active roster and the franchise’s South Bay G League affiliate, sources told ESPN on Friday.
This is not much of a story because the G League season hasn’t started yet, so Bronny was always going to be with the team at the start of the season. And once the season started, everyone knew that Bronny would be playing more in the G League than the NBA.
Again, though, those are Redick’s words, who gave a...curt response to being asked about the report and whether it was the team’s plan to send Bronny to the G League once their season started.
“Our plans are always fluid, based in real time,” Redick said. “The plan for Bronny to move between the Lakers roster and the South Bay roster, that’s always been the plan since day one. [Vice president of basketball operations] Rob [Pelinka] and I have talked about that. LeBron’s talked about that. So I didn’t know that that’s not really like a story.”
To the point of people talking about it, that started a while back, even during the Summer League. In Las Vegas, JJ Redick referred to Bronny as a “development player” and noted he would spend time in the G League.
Bronny himself was asked about the G League and said he’s fine playing there during Media Day. Everyone knew this was going to happen.
I suppose the problem is that “G League season set to begin” doesn’t get quite as many clicks as making it about Bronny.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.