Bronny James had a tough start to his NBA career over the summer and his new Lakers teammate Austin Reaves has revealed what he plans to do when teaming up with the younger James this upcoming season.
All eyes were on Bronny during Summer League, after he had a bad time shooting and the criticisms were coming from every corner of the basketball world.
But Reaves is excited to team up with LeBron’s eldest son on the court and help guide him in his formative NBA years.
“For me to be able to be around him and see what that’s going to be like,” Reaves said, via Silver Screen and Roll. “It’s going to be very cool for me. I also can’t wait to see Bronny grow. Obviously, he gets a bad rap because of who his dad is. Everybody’s going to hold him to the standards of his dad when the kid just wants to play and have fun and create his own path so I can’t wait to get around him and see him grow and ultimately make a career for himself in his own way.”
The Lakers had a disappointing end to last season, yet made very little trade moves in the offseason.
Bronny and incoming coach JJ Reddick were the biggest changes and Reaves thinks the current squad can be in the championship conversation in 2024-25.
“As our team, I like where we’re at,” Reaves said. “I think we have what we need to compete for a championship. You look back at the Denver series last year, I forgot the statistics but we led like 165 minutes to their like 59 minutes or something and we got beat 4-1, which we can’t really wrap our mind around.”
“So I like where we’re at. And, obviously, getting JJ [Redick] as I was talking about, someone who is a fierce competitor and who we saw in Vegas for Summer League. He came up to us and said that he’s been staring at a white board for three hours trying to figure out how we’re going to do this stuff,” Reaves added. “You can just tell the intensity that he has and know the time he’s going to put in. So like I said I’m super excited for him to kind of lead the charge for us and I really like where we’re at.”
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