JJ Redick got asked about Bronny James after the Lakers’ 101-89 loss to Golden State in Las Vegas on Tuesday, and he did not soften it. “I thought he had a really nice September and a good summer with us,” Redick said.
Note the tense. Redick went on to say that Bronny has not played well across the four preseason games, while crediting his practice work and pointing to rhythm and the lineups he has been dropped into.
That is a head coach saying the quiet thing in public about the most scrutinized reserve in the league. It is also accurate.
The numbers back him up
Bronny, now 22, has played about 17.5 minutes a night across four preseason games. He is averaging 2.8 points on 26.7% shooting, with 3.3 assists and 0.5 steals.
The assist number is the interesting one. Averaging 3.3 assists in 17.5 minutes is real production for a young guard, and it suggests the passing and the processing are ahead of the rest of his game. Nothing else in that line is close to playable. Shooting 26.7% from the field is the number that keeps a player on the bench in October and in the G League by January.
Redick’s explanation about rhythm and lineup partners is not an excuse. A fourth-string guard in preseason gets handed minutes with whoever is left over, and shot quality collapses in those groups. It is also not a defense that survives another month of 26.7%.
What it means for the Lakers
On the same night Bronny struggled, Austin Reaves scored 28 points on 10-of-18 shooting, 23 of them in the first half, and went 4-of-7 from three. Walker Kessler put up 11 points and 9 rebounds. The Lakers have functioning rotation players, and the guard minutes stacked ahead of Bronny are not theoretical.
The roster math is not urgent, though. He has a team option for the 2027-28 season, which means Los Angeles does not have to decide anything about him this week, this month or this season. The Lakers can let the development take as long as the development takes.
He gets one more look before the lights come on. Los Angeles hosts Denver on Friday to close the preseason, and the real schedule starts with the league’s Oct. 20 opening night. One good night against the Nuggets would not erase a 26.7% month, but it would give Redick something more recent to point at than September.
Redick did him a favor
The easy move for a coach in this spot is to praise the practices and stop talking. Redick praised the practices and then said the games have not been good, which is the version everyone watching had already reached on their own.
Saying it out loud lowers the temperature. Bronny has spent two years being discussed as a referendum instead of a player, and a coach who grades him publicly like any other 22-year-old on a learning curve is the most normal treatment he has gotten yet. The September praise was real. So is the October problem.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.