There are still plenty of questions about how it’s going to work with both LeBron James and Bronny James on the Los Angeles Lakers this season.
The elder James, however, has made one thing clear. There’s no calling him “dad” on the job.
“We already laid that down. He cannot call me ‘Dad’ in the workplace,” James said in an upcoming episode of ‘The Shop’ that he shot in Paris during the Olympics earlier this month.
“Once we leave out of the practice facility and the gates close, I can be ‘Dad’ again.”
The Lakers selected Bronny with the No. 55 overall pick in the NBA Draft earlier this summer after one season at USC. He then signed a four-year, $7.9 million guaranteed contract with the team, which is rare for a second-round pick. Bronny spent time with the Lakers Summer League team in Las Vegas in July, and he had multiple games where he scored double figures despite starting a brutal 0-for-15 from behind the arc.
James has long said that he has wanted to play in the league with his son before he retires. Once they take the court together for the first time in a game, they’ll be the first father-son duo to play as teammates in NBA history and just the fourth father-son duo to do so in major American professional sports.
It’s unclear what kind of impact Bronny will have for the Lakers this season under first-year head coach JJ Redick, who was hired to take over for Darvin Ham. How he is able to work alongside his father, who is entering his 22nd season in the league, as a coworker remains to be seen, too.
As far as what they’ll call each other, though, James insisted that’s going to be easy for him. For his son, however, that’s a different story.
“It’s easy for me. It’s going to be an adjustment for him,” James said. “But we can not be running down the court and he be like, ‘Dad, push the ball up. Dad I’m open! Dad!’ No, he cannot do that.”