Bronny James scored his first NBA basket Wednesday night. The cosmic scriptwriters, working within the boundaries imposed by Bronny's limitations as a basketball player, did their best. It was never going to be a significant bucket in the story of a basketball game, because Bronny isn't very good and the Lakers are, or certainly intend to be. The setting was nice, though: The bucket came in the fourth quarter of a road game against Bronny's hometown Cavaliers, in the only visit his Lakers will make to Cleveland this regular season. It so happened that the Lakers, off to an otherwise encouraging 3–1 start under new head coach and dynamic podcaster J.J. Redick, were in the process of getting comprehensively pantsed by the home team, leaving Bronny to handle the bad kind of mop-up duties.
Bronny checked into the game with just over five minutes left in the fourth quarter, to a loud "Bron-ny" chant from welcoming Cavs fans, who by that point had been calling for him on and off for about three straight minutes of game action. The buzz continued, crescendoing whenever Bronny touched the ball over the next few Lakers possessions. Then, with about 2:15 left on the clock, Bronny pushed the ball down to the Cleveland baseline, retreated a few steps, jabbed as if to use a screen toward the middle of the court, and pulled up for a contested mid-ranger. The noise in the arena suggested a playoff game, including a huge pop when the shot fell.
Ty Jerome rudely interrupted the moment with a quick bucket the other way, and then Bronny immediately dribbled into a bad live-ball turnover, and though the crowd remained standing for the final 90 seconds of action, the game reverted to the sloppy and undignified final act of a gory blowout. Bronny did not score again.
This might be as good as it gets for the younger James, for a while and possibly forever: Shams Charania and Dave McMenamin of ESPN reported on Oct. 25 that the Lakers intend to ship Bronny down to the NBA's developmental league at the end of their current five-game road trip, which will conclude on Nov. 6. They're using small moments in the opening stages of this campaign to wrap up some items of unfinished James family business: getting Bronny drafted, then getting him through his first professional experiences, then getting him into an NBA game, into a lineup with his father, getting him a game back home in front of an adoring Cleveland crowd, getting him a first bucket. Probably they dream of getting a father-to-son or son-to-father assist in there, before the mini-tour wraps and the Lakers return home and get marginally more serious about maximizing their title chances.
I have to admit that Bronny's big moment Wednesday night, deeply unsexy though it was in basketball terms, felt wholesome, even heart-warming. There's a value proposition being exploited by the Lakers that even I find satisfying: It's cheap to the point of meaninglessness to an operation of their prestige, and entirely painless within their basketball operation, for them to check their way down this feel-good list. Each gesture, meanwhile, has huge meaning in the life and career of this kid—whose only real role in all of this was having a dream of playing in the NBA while having as a father the greatest NBA player of the current era—and along the way delights big buzzing crowds of hoops fans in at least two different time zones. It's costing some marginal but superior player a few days of service time at the lonely end of an NBA bench, but then Udonis Haslem did that for most of a decade and became a regional superhero. At these low low prices, you would be crazy not to allow yourself to feel happy for the goofy youth knocking down the improbable 14-footer from the wrong side of an October bloodbath.
I think another part of what made the moment nice is the condition of the Cleveland Cavaliers, somehow already underway on their seventh season following James's second departure. They're good as hell now! Kenny Atkinson took over as head coach with a goal of making the Cavs faster and more fluid on offense, without sacrificing too much of the hellacious interior defense that defined what his predecessor, J.B. Bickerstaff, got entirely right with this same basic core of players. The early returns—the very early returns—are encouraging: After consecutive wins over star-laden playoff teams, the Cavaliers are the Eastern Conference's last remaining undefeated team. Underbaked per-possession numbers from Cleaning the Glass put Cleveland in the league's top three in both offensive rating and defensive rating. In a more promising reflection of Atkinson's influence, the Cavs sit eighth in the NBA in pace of play: Under Bickerstaff, who is a very good head coach, the Cavs never finished a regular season ranked better than 24th.
The Cavs have the quality of always seeming to have an extra player on the floor, of somehow always finding another open shooter at the end of a sequence of swing passes. It's spooky how good most of their guys are at standing in the right places. Their spacing guys—Dean Wade, Georges Niang, Sam Merrill—appear in open positions around the arc as if by teleportation, never more than one pass away from the ball-handler. This will become even more powerful a strength when the ruthless Max Strus, who is deadly even when standing in insanely wrong positions, returns from injury next month. Jarrett Allen is somehow always in the exact position to catch a dump-off or throw down a lob. The few guys who handle creation duties sometimes get funky—Donovan Mitchell simply cannot resist dribbling into a handful of irresponsible pull-up jumpers per game—but it's hard to funk your way into very serious trouble when the floor around you is always so precisely arranged. This was a team strength under Bickerstaff, but now the Cavs are doing it in fast motion, with more movement and more passing. The Cavaliers have had four different leading scorers in their first five games, and the basketball looks extremely fun.
They've leaned into a thing early this season where Evan Mobley is allowed to make dribble moves on the perimeter, betting that his first-step quickness against defenders his size will force interior help. Wednesday night his first option on these forays appeared not to be to score, but rather to pull a defensive helper into the action and create passing lanes, in particular lob opportunities for Allen. Unlike other big-big two-man sets of this sort around the league, which tend to be repeated inside the same narrow strip of court, Mobley's quickness and Allen's genuinely game-breaking Stand Exactly Here skills allow the Cavs to link these two from some surprising angles. Mobley had a few turns cracking the defense during a monstrous first-quarter run against the Lakers: twice Allen's defender stepped forward and Mobley lofted the ball directly over his head; once the defender did not, and Mobley drove straight through Austin Reaves for a layup. The box-score returns aren't eye-popping—Mobley has as many turnovers as assists through five games, and a couple of his assists have been suspect—but, again, it just looks very fun, like the Cavs are full of confidence and enjoy doing things for the next guy.
It's no longer possible to imagine any but the most deranged Cavs fans pining for the bygone LeBron days. Things are just working out too well for all parties. In a sense it was better for everyone that the Lakers got chewed up Wednesday night: It got Bronny into the game, and it ensured that there was nothing but delight and good cheer in the chants of the Cleveland faithful. Cleveland has a good and ascending and particularly fun home team, the Lakers have a contender out West, LeBron has his job and primary residence in one city, everyone's got rings to show for their associations, and the James family's breadwinners get to drive to work together. And the kid got a bucket! In this blowout, everyone wins.
