LeBron James‘ former Cleveland Cavaliers teammate, Iman Shumpert, compared Bronny James to former Los Angeles Lakers No. 2 pick Lonzo Ball.
“People don’t give Lonzo Ball enough credit,” Shumpert told RGorg. “Even though he’s had his ups and downs, he plays a team game. He’s able to get other players involved. He’s able to make people better and I think Bronny does an excellent job of that.”
To be fair, Shumpert was not comparing Bronny in terms of Ball’s tangible on-court production.
“[Bronny] does an excellent job of being able to stay in a rhythm without getting people out of rhythm,” Shumpert continued. “He doesn’t take a lot of dribbles. They need a lot of touches in order to get going. And he doesn’t. He plays a pretty efficient game and the more he gets in those decision-making positions that he has to make down the stretch — when it really means something — we’re going to see a really quick learning curve.”
Bronny James Can Take a Page out of Lonzo Ball’s Career Arc
Ball was a highly-touted prospect coming out of his lone season at UCLA. Selected No. 2 in the 2017 NBA draft, Ball was a triple-double threat. He averaged 10.2 points, 7.2 assists, 6.9 rebounds and 1.7 steals for the Lakers as a rookie.
Bronny James is the exact opposite.
LeBron James’ eldest son struggled during his one-and-done season at USC, averaging only 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists, which led to the “nepotism” criticisms when the Lakers drafted him 55th overall.
But that does not mean Bronny James cannot be developed. He could learn a thing or two from Ball’s career arc.
Like Bronny James, Ball was not a good outside shooter out of college. But he showed marked improvement each season. He started his NBA career shooting just 30.5% from the 3-point range. During the 2021-22 season, Ball shot a career-high 42.3% from long distance on a high-volume rate, a staggering 12% jump from his rookie year.
If Bronny James can make a similar improvement in his outside shot, he can become a solid 3-and-D player in the NBA.
Through two preseason games, Bronny James is averaging 1.0 points on an abysmal 14.3% shooting and 2.5 turnovers in 14.7 minutes. In the NBA Summer League, he shot 35.0% from the field and 15.8% from beyond the arc.
Bronny James Is ‘Test Case No. 1′ for Lakers’ New Player Development Program
Lakers rookie coach JJ Redick referred to Bronny as “test case No. 1” for the Lakers’ new and modernized player development program under his watch.
Redick explained in detail how the Lakers’ new player development will work on Bronny James and the young players on their roster.
“You guys want to talk about systems, let’s talk about systems,” Redick said before the Lakers training camp. “So we have three player development pods and all coaches have players within those pods that they are responsible for.”
“So it’s not just Ty (Abbott) that’s in charge of player development. When we hired Zach Guthrie to be our G League coach, that was a big thing that we talked about is player development and having synergy and integration between our two teams and sort of Zach being an extension of our coaching staff. So some of that responsibility is communication, organization.”
Bronny James is expected to spend most of his rookie season in the G League.
“Beau Levesque, who came from the Los Angeles Clippers in the player development role, has also had a big impact this summer,” Redick continued. “Greg St. Jean as well, Lindsay Harding. The four of them have done a lot of player development stuff and will continue to do so because we’re asking a lot of all of our coaches. We talked about all of us just being Swiss army knives and doing a bunch of different things while having defined roles.”
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Bronny James Compared to Former Lakers No. 2 Pick