Former Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade recently clapped back at folks who believe that LeBron James’ son Bronny wasn’t worthy of being selected by the Los Angeles Lakers with the No. 55 overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft.
“Well, none of them could beat him in basketball,” Wade said of the younger James’ naysayers. “So, you can’t listen to that. Like I said, if you’re not there with me every day, if you’re not going through the moments where you gotta embrace the suck — when you not going through the moments where you don’t — you wanna quit because it’s so hard — if you’re not in this with me, you can’t — I can’t listen to you comment about me. And so hopefully Bronny has his headphones on.”
Wade spent four seasons playing alongside the elder James on the Heat. During their time together, they led the Heat to four straight appearances in the NBA Finals and a pair of titles in 2012 and 2013.
Despite the fact that Wade and the elder James were both selected in the 2003 NBA Draft, Wade retired after the 2018-19 season while the latter’s NBA career is still going strong, though he is currently the league’s oldest player at 39.
The elder James is far removed from his time spent on the same team as Wade, considering the forward’s swan song with the Heat came all the way back in the 2013-14 season.
The younger James was selected with one of the final picks in last month’s draft after a one-season stint playing college basketball at the University of Southern California. He logged 25 appearances and six starts with the Trojans during the 2023-24 campaign and averaged 4.8 points per game on 36.6 percent shooting from the field and 26.7 percent from deep on top of 2.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 0.8 steals per contest.
The 19-year-old had a difficult time scoring the ball all season for the Trojans, as he reached double digits in points in just three of the 25 games he played in for the program. He scored a season-high 15 points while converting six of his 11 shots from the field against Oregon State University in December of last year.
While the younger James didn’t set the college basketball world ablaze by any stretch during his lone season at USC, he will have a chance to learn from some of the best players in the NBA right now in Davis along with the elder James on the Lakers. Lakers fans should be eager to see the league’s first father-son duo ever take the floor next season.
