Bronny James is once again under fire for the way he looks in an NBA uniform, with a recent criticism arguing that the Los Angeles Lakers should move on after his latest outing. The complaint is blunt: even with modest improvement, he still does not look like an NBA player.
That is why his name is back in the spotlight today. James has now played 42 games in his second NBA season, and the numbers are still thin enough to fuel the argument. He averaged 2.9 points and 8.9 minutes while shooting 40.9% from the field and 38.6% from three, a clear step up from his first NBA season, when he played 27 games, averaged 2.3 points in 6.7 minutes and shot 31.3% overall and 28.1% from deep.
The criticism lands harder because the Los Angeles Lakers selected him 55th overall in the 2024 NBA Draft, a move the piece links directly to LeBron James. It says the Lakers wanted to keep LeBron happy and suggests he might have left L.A. if he could not play with his son. That makes every quiet night from Bronny more than a developmental note; it turns into a roster debate.
What gives the argument some force is the split between his NBA role and his G League production. In the 2024-25 G League season, James played 18 games and averaged 18.6 points, 4.5 rebounds, 4.8 assists and 31.4 minutes, while shooting 41.5% from the field and 33.6% from deep. Last season, he played 20 G League games and averaged 13.8 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 29.5 minutes, with 50.2% shooting from the field and 37.6% from three. Even with those numbers, the piece argues his NBA call-ups are hard to defend.
The sharper problem is that the improvement does not settle the question; it only narrows it. A Player Efficiency Rating of 12.9 in the G League ranked 330th among qualified players there, and the comparison made in the criticism is merciless, saying he would be lucky to play in Europe and likening the gap to Michael Jordan's.202 batting average in Double-A. The point is not that he has made no progress. It is that the progress still looks too small to justify an NBA roster spot.
That leaves the Los Angeles Lakers with the part no one can answer yet: whether they keep treating Bronny James as a project or decide the experiment has run its course. The criticism does not confirm a move, but it does sharpen the pressure on a team that selected him for more than basketball alone. If the numbers keep looking like this, the next decision may be less about development than about whether there is still a place for him at all.
