A BUSTLING NBA BEGINS WITH LEBRON-BRONNY — AGAIN? — AND ANGRY CELTICS
A league bolstered with $76 billion in media supercharging allows LeBron James to play with his son, if JJ Redick says so, when people would rather see LeBron play with Curry and the Celtics win again
If you’re playing in a pop-a-shot league or wallowing inside your own psychological experiment, please trade Steph Curry to a team with LeBron James. It’s the sweetest deal that could happen in the NBA, which continues to flaunt two legends as the best players when they’re about to turn a collective 77. We watched them play together at the Olympics in Paris.
They were more impressed with each other than the rest of us were. “I understand what Steph has done for this game. I understand what he’s done for this organization, what he’s done for the community, people all over the world,” James said. “Just by his approach to the game and how he is as a man. How he is as a family man. How he is as a husband, a dad, a son, all that stuff. So when you have that type of respect and then you get to be around them every day and you see the way they work and how they treat their craft, it’s a pretty cool thing.”
Does he want a trade to happen? Curry to the Lakers, joining LeBron and son Bronny in a bonkers swirl — which Tuesday will include the dual Ken Griffeys in the stands? Or, James to the Warriors? Speak up, LeBron.
“I have no idea,” he said. “I have no idea.”
It won’t happen, sorry, in an intensely tangled league controlled by something called the second apron. This is not worn by someone who feeds Charles Barkley, who enters his final season with TNT while ESPN is rabbit-spinning to hire him away. One reason Karl-Anthony Towns was traded to New York for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo is because of the vaunted second apron. Minnesota made the deal, despite its appearance in the Western Conference finals, to avoid the ugly. By keeping Towns, who is starting a $220 million extension, the Timberwolves couldn’t afford a payroll above $188.9 million without stepping into industry dog-doo. New financial rules would bury them and their ability to make trades for years. So Towns leaves for the Knicks. Klay Thompson was shipped to Dallas. And Paul George is off to Philadelphia.
Welcome to the league in its first season as a parity-driven scheme that might allow the Oklahoma City Thunder — ranked 47th in market size, just below McAllen, Texas — to reach the Finals. Everyone has a chance to excel or suck regardless of population size. Boston should repeat as a champion but not without drama involving the sale of the franchise and sore feelings from Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who were bruised by the same Olympiad politics rewarding Curry and James. The NBA is a corporate slog that reminds us about the author of these words 10 years ago to the New York Times: “Betting on professional sports is currently illegal in most of the United States outside of Nevada. I believe we need a different approach.”
That would be Adam Silver, the commissioner. Riding that grimy gambling wave, he has positioned the league for a profitable future with a supercharge of $76 billion. The NBA is firmly positioned as the No. 2 circle in American sports after a media contract with Disney, NBC and Amazon Prime. Silver and his 30 owners simply carry on, while commanding a $4 billion price for the Phoenix Suns as Major League Baseball stumbles in the $1.7 billion range for teams in Baltimore, Minnesota and even Chicago.
The inflated leather ball is bigger than anything but the NFL’s prolate sphere, which includes soccer in our land. It explains why Silver doesn’t care if James trots out Bronny for a regular-season game at Crypto.com Arena, though serious fans in Los Angeles wonder how it relates to playoff difficulty. In a true world, the kid would play a minute with his father and be sent down to the South Bay Lakers. So far, LeBron and his former podcast partner, coach JJ Redick, haven’t said when or if that move will happen. One father-son appearance, the first in league history, could become several more.
Why? LeBron says so. Even if 100 kids in town, including on the beach in Venice, are more prepared than Bronny. The meaning is understandable after he suffered cardiac arrest 15 months ago. Still, this is the NBA and he needs to perform now and then and do more than make a defensive stretch.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be insane — only two families to do it, so it’s going to be a crazy experience. Especially with what they’ve done,” Bronny said of the Griffeys.
Said Redick: “Nothing has been finalized for anything yet.”
If not — say, the Lakers trail Anthony Edwards and the Wolves by 20 — they’d better tell the Griffeys first. “It’s a big deal for me and my dad to be there,” Ken Jr. said on MLB Network radio. “First father and son to play baseball, now first father and son to play basketball. We made history and now we get to watch history, so that’s what’s going to be cool about it.” How about a brief moment early in the opening quarter so Redick doesn’t lose his mind on his first night? Remember, Bronny told Men’s Health this month that his health is on his mind. “My days aren’t normal anymore,” he said. “I still feel like I’m getting back, I’m getting back to where I was.”
What will Bronny call his dad on the floor? “Um, probably Bron,” he said. “That probably would be the easiest one.”
And the game? “I think it will be different,” he said. “No different than me getting ready for any game, but just the feeling of being in our home arena for the first time playing a game, that’s special.”
The basketball story remains the Celtics. No champion has repeated since 2018, and Tatum sounds unsatisfied despite winning a ring. It wasn’t fair when Steve Kerr forced him to rest during the Summer Games. Team USA won gold, giving him two summer triumphs, but he sounds bitter. That’s not a good sign for the rest of the league. Asked what he learned in Paris, Tatum said, “That’s a broad question. You want to be more specific?” Is he more motivated?
“Want to address that I didn’t play in two of those games, is that what you mean? Uhh, motivation,” he said. “I guess you could say that, if you want to simplify. In real time it was tough.” Of course, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla was thrilled Tatum didn’t win MVP in the Finals — Brown won — and missed two Olympics games.
No need to fire up one of the league’s best players. “That was odd, but if you know Joe, it makes sense,” he said. “Did I need any extra motivation coming into the season? No, I’m not going to give anybody in particular credit that they’re motivating me to come into the season. It was a unique circumstance. Something I haven’t experienced before in my playing career, but I’m a believer that everything happens for a reason. Whatever the reason is, I haven’t figured it out yet … but it was a good experience. We won a gold medal, my second one.”
As for Brown, he was blown off by Team USA boss Grant Hill when Kawhi Leonard was injured. Derrick White received the call, a terrific Celtics guard but not the Finals MVP, and Brown showed anger by posting a tweet with eyeglass emojis. He suggested Nike, a team sponsor, stiffed him. Said Hill: “Whatever theories that might be out there, they’re just that.” The Americans barely won the gold medal. Had they lost, Brown would be chortling.
“Question No. 1!” he said, smiling. “Do I get to warm up a little?”
Through it all, Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck announced his family was selling the team. So much for paying a billion dollars in player salaries. “It's amazing how many of my friends in the industry have won a championship and (say) it's like one or two days and then it's done," basketball boss Brad Stevens told ESPN. “I think in a lot of ways I would agree with that from my own perspective. I think Joe summed that up well with his ‘nobody cares’ quote. Everybody's after (us). We've got a really good team, so do a lot of other teams. We're going to have to beat all of them and human nature. That's the challenge, and what the hell, it's a great challenge.”
The Knicks haven’t won a championship in 52 years. Can they do so with Towns, who fires up three-pointers and does inside work for a team that advanced with toughness last year? Can they do so with coach Tom Thibodeau dragging through the playoffs? They open Tuesday in Boston, with people asking if trading DiVincenzo was a bad idea. He was terrific with Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart, his former Villanova teammates, and the arrival of Mikal Bridges almost required a hiring call to coach Jay Wright. Instead, they sent Donte away, which left him upset during a preseason game.
“Can’t finish, right, Thibs?” DiVincenzo said twice to the Knicks bench, claiming he was joking with Thibodeau while hitting two free throws. Then he said, “That’s what happens when they let you run the show” — words that may have been meant for Thibodeau or assistant coach Rick Brunson.
After the game, Brunson — Jalen’s father — pointed at DiVincenzo on the court. “Two people talking. Words of affirmation,” said Jalen, who pulled them apart. DiVincenzo remains miffed about the trade, making the matter difficult for Jalen when Donte was a groomsman at his wedding. “My relationship with Jalen — that’s my brother, my best friend,” he said. “That’s a separate relationship. I said I’ll talk about that privately and figure that out.”
The Wolves love DiVincenzo. “You can't be mad at him, man,” Edwards said. “He makes all the right plays and shoots the cover off the ball. New York is definitely going to miss him." Just the same, they’ll miss Towns.
“It's like a death in the family in some ways,” coach Chris Finch said. “You got to make it through that first year and everything is going to be a little odd. Once we get started, it'll be business as usual.”
The Celtics, Knicks and Timberwolves are among the NBA’s best five teams. They play tonight with a team, the Lakers, that will be lucky to finish in ninth place.
Yet who receives the attention? LeBron and Bronny.
“We stood next to each other and I kinda looked at him, and it was just like, ‘Is this The Matrix or something,’ ’’ LeBron said of the preseason night they played together. “It just didn’t feel right.”
This time? “I don’t feel like there will be time to do all that. Especially when you’re checking in in the heat of the moment,” Bronny said. “So I’ll probably take time to do that afterwards.”
It’s that kind of league, $76 billion stronger. We’ve already seen them play together. Now, because of the LeBronster, we’ll see them again.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.