Nepotism debate behind NBA's first father-son act

LeBron and Bronny James are set to become the first father and son to play on the same team in tonight's season opener

- JAMIE BRAIDWOOD

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 tonight (or the early hours of Wednesday morning, for European viewers), 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 the NBA, 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’ purple and gold against the Minnesota Timberwolves.