The nepotism debate behind LeBron and Bronny James’s historic father-son duo

There is a moment in the recent Netflix documentary Starting 5 where LeBron James meets the woman who saved his son’s life. Bronny James, his eldest, was 18 when he suffered a cardiac arrest running through a pre-season workout at the University of Southern California in July 2023; he remembers nothing from it, aside from blacking out during a regular drill. Team physios, including Erin Tillman, whom LeBron greets inside the locker room with a sense of awe, performed CPR and shocked Bronny back to life. “They are the reason Bronny is alive now and smiling and thriving and living out his dream,” he says.

And yet, that Bronny could take to the court for the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night, a year on from his cardiac arrest and being diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, isn’t even the most notable aspect of his debut in the NBA. Neither is it simply the fact he is the son of LeBron, one of the greatest basketball players of all time and an icon of the league for the past 22 years. Rather, for the first time in NBA history, a father and son will play on the same team when Bronny, now 20, lines up alongside his 39-year-old father and they pull on the Lakers’s purple and gold against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

For LeBron, who holds several NBA records and leads the all-time scoring list, it is a feat that would have been impossible to dream of when he entered the league and made his own debut in 2003. It is a testament to his unprecedented longevity that he will play into his forties while the allure of playing alongside his son has undoubtedly fuelled a desire to remain at the top. LeBron and Bronny will join a select group of fathers and sons to play professional sports together in the United States; Ken Griffey Sr and Ken Griffey Jr’s spell with the Seattle Mariners, in Major League Baseball, is a prominent example but that was back in 1991.

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The sight of LeBron and Bronny fulfilling the roles of the father-son duo is therefore a once-in-a-generation event, an aligning of the planets that may not occur again for just as long. That it is happening at all, however, has triggered debate, and even disapproval. For the detractors, the image of Bronny’s NBA debut for the Lakers is in itself the visualisation of nepotism and its associated ills: while his cardiac arrest was a traumatic event for the James family, Bronny has been accused of skipping the queue by those who want to believe major sports leagues like the NBA are a meritocracy where ability and effort can be easily measured on a level playing field.

The NBA and wider arena of professional sport, though, is as susceptible to nepotism as any other area of society, from business and politics to entertainment and education. It is certainly hard to dispute the argument that Bronny has been elevated to the NBA far more quickly than you would expect of a 6ft 2in shooting guard – small for the NBA – who averaged just 4.8 points per game in his one interrupted season in college.

With LeBron entering free agency in the summer, the Lakers selected Bronny with the 55th, and third-last, pick of the draft. A dream fulfilled, and a star player with all the incentive he needed to stay, LeBron signed a two-year, $104m contract days later to remain in LA.

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Inevitably, Bronny’s selection was met with scepticism. If playing with the most famous surname in basketball over the past two decades wasn’t difficult enough, Bronny’s initial performances in pre-season were ridiculed. He struggled through his first five games, coughing up errors in possession and offering an average of only 1.6 points on 20 per cent shooting, figures well below the level considered acceptable for the NBA. It wasn’t until Bronny scored 17 points in the Lakers’ sixth and final pre-season game, in a blowout loss to the Golden State Warriors, that he felt he had showcased a more accurate display of his talents.

Needless to say, the jury is still out – and will remain so while Bronny faces a level of expectation that is impossibly high to reach. Yet this is also the spotlight the James family have been preparing for ever since Bronny’s high school games with Sierra Canyon were broadcast live and nationwide on ESPN. As the cameras tracked every move and LeBron pumped his chest and roared courtside, the James family was on its way to becoming an equivalent of the Kardashians or the Smiths, with fame spreading between the generations and creating even more.

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LeBron may feel he has given enough to the NBA to earn the right to do what he wants and make the most of what is a unique opportunity. But the cost of his son taking a place on the Lakers’ 15-player roster is that someone potentially more deserving has missed out. For Bronny, it only goes to increase the pressure that will surround the NBA’s first father-son duo and how long the Lakers’ experiment can last. Bronny, at least, has been defiant. And he’s shown he can overturn the odds before.

“I’ve already seen it in social media and on the internet and stuff talking about how I might not deserve an opportunity,” he said back in July. “But I’ve been dealing with this stuff for my whole life. It’s nothing different. It’s more amplified for sure, but I can get through it.”