5 takeaways: LeBron, Bronny make history

• Get NBA League Pass TODAY >
LOS ANGELES — In reality, it lasted 2 minutes and 41 seconds. In all probability, it will last the rest of our lifetimes.
A father and son shared the floor in an NBA game. For the first time. Perhaps the last? In order to duplicate what LeBron James and Bronny James accomplished, a father must play roughly two decades in the NBA, for starters, which is rare enough.
Even with that, that’s no guarantee the son will follow or even choose to play basketball.
And so history happened Tuesday night at Crypto.com Arena with four minutes left before halftime, when father and son both checked into the game against the Timberwolves. Fans stood, cell phone cameras were raised, and the sound of the horn was drowned out by applause.
Here are Five Takeaways from the Lakers’ 110-103 victory, starting with what everyone came to see:
The situation and setting was just about perfect — the score was 52-35 in favor of the Lakers and the final minutes began to tick toward halftime.
There was no need to force the issue, then, and make the situation awkward. Bronny, the 55th pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, wasn’t the first player off the bench. And he didn’t stay in the game beyond the next timeout, or return in the second half.
As these things could possibly go, it happened naturally and reasonably.
The only drawback was Bronny missing a 3-point shot after catching a cross-court pass from his father. Had that ball swished — on a Bron to Bron connection — the arena would have burst. Instead, the crowd delivered a collective groan. Still, history.
Bronny took two shots, had the first one, a follow-up attempt, deflected by Rudy Gobert. He flashed solid rotational movement and defensive instincts. Then his night was over.
“Everything was just great today,” said LeBron. “I saw my daughter (Zhuri, who turned 10) before she went to school, saw my son at work.”
LeBron deserves this, for respecting the game enough to stay in pristine shape, obviously for performing at a high level for decades and lasting this long in the league, and for preparing his son for this moment.
Whatever happens next is meaningless, really. Bronny can go to the G-League, as expected, and fall through the cracks or return to the Lakers roster and be nothing more than a backup, because the historical goal was achieved. Everything else is secondary.
Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Jr. attended the game and posed for a photo with LeBron and Bronny before tipoff. The Griffeys became baseball’s first father-and-son tandem, for the Seattle Mariners on August 31, 1990.
“It was a different situation with me as opposed to LeBron,” Griffey Sr. said Tuesday after the game. “Seattle was trying to get rid of me. I had 18 years I the league. Also, I didn’t think (Junior) was going to get called up from the minors. Then the regular first baseman got hurt, they had no one else to play the position but me … I hit .314 in the spring so they couldn’t get rid of me. And my son set records in spring training, so we became father and son. I didn’t think it would happen so quickly.”
Two moments captured their two seasons together: They hit back-to-back homers in September of 1990, and about that, Griffey Sr. said: “I homered first so all the pressure was on him. The count was 3-0 and I thought he would just get walked. The next pitch was a sinker down and away and he hit it out anyway. He had to reach for it because he wanted to make it happen.”
The next? When Junior rushed over and caught a fly ball meant for his father when they played in the outfield. Griffey Sr. said: “I grounded his ass for that.”
Those memories came rushing back to the Griffeys on Tuesday and Griffey Sr. was especially caught up in the moment.
“It’s just a legendary thing, looking at those two,” he said of LeBron and Bronny. “As a father, I enjoyed every minute of it and I know LeBron did, too.”
Aside from Bronny getting burn, the next welcome sight from the Lakers’ standpoint was Anthony Davis making a powerful opening statement.
He was, in a word, dominant: 36 points, 16 rebounds, 3 blocks. And it mostly came against a 4-time Kia Defensive Player of the Year. In that sense, this was Paris, Redux — Davis played well on the gold medal-winning Team USA, which beat Gobert and France in the final.
There will be nights, perhaps plenty of them, when the Lakers will need Davis to be the best player on the floor at both ends, and he’s certainly capable of that.
Davis has never won the DPOY award, but you couldn’t tell Tuesday, especially after a vicious block on Gobert, denying a dunk.
He only played in one preseason game, and missed a chunk of last season in New York because of injury, so the early, early return on Julius Randle was perhaps as expected.
He looked disconnected all night, never established a smooth flow and often fell victim to his biggest flaw — poor ball handling and decision-making.
Randle will likely establish himself and give the Wolves a badly-needed second volume scorer to Edwards, for two reasons: He’s playing for a contract extension and when healthy he’s All-Star capable.
There is one problematic byproduct of the trade that brought in to New York, though. Randle can be, at best, an average 3-point shooter. He’s replacing one of the better shooting big men in recent history, though. So the drop-off in that area puts pressure on others, such as Donte DiVincenzo, to compensate. But DiVincenzo shot 2-for-8 from deep.
Is this how the Wolves will operate most of the season, with Anthony Edwards being the only reliable volume shooter? With Towns gone, Edwards took 25 shots (for 27 points despite constant double-teams); next highest was DiVincenzo with 11.
The Wolves were the league’s best defensive team last season yet scoring was a problem. Much depends on Randle, a proven 20-point scorer, and how he fits next to Edwards. But there’s also a sense of offensive urgency with others, and whether they can enhance their game.
It’ll be up to DiVincenzo, Kia Sixth Man Award winner Naz Reid and maybe Jaden McDaniels, who’s a shut-down defender but very inconsistent offensively and limited to corner 3s.
The Wolves reached the conference finals last season. This time, their chances to go one step beyond and make the NBA Finals will depend on Minnesota’s ability to strike the right balance. It didn’t happen in the season opener, when they shot 41% overall and 31 from deep.
* * *
Shaun Powell has covered the NBA for more than 25 years. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Warner Bros. Discovery.