Charles Barkley Criticizes Lakers' Handling Of Bronny James
Yesterday at 11:24 AM
The Los Angeles Lakers have had an interesting plan in place for rookie second-round pick Bronny James. Thus far, Bronny has split time between the parent team and the G League South Bay Lakers, only playing in home games for the latter. It’s an unusual situation, and one that has drawn plenty of criticism from some around the league.
One of those figures is Charles Barkley. The Hall of Fame player is one of the game’s most popular on-air personalities today, doing incredible work for Inside the NBA on TNT. Him criticizing a subject is usually him just doing a job, but with his playing experience, there is also plenty of working knowledge of the right and wrong ways to go about things in the NBA.
He had harsh words for the Lakers and LeBron James in the handling of Bronny thus far in his NBA career with him only playing G League home games, via The Bettor Angle from Audacy Sports:
"Awful. It was so funny, I was actually taping The Match with Ken Griffey Jr. way before the season started. He was telling me him and his dad were gonna go out to that first game. Then I was with my foolish friends later and they were like 'You think Bronny is gonna make the opening day roster?' I said there is a 100 percent chance. There is no way in the world Nike is sending Ken Griffey Jr. out there and Bronny is not getting on the court with his dad. That's a Nike commercial waiting to happen. I thought it was great, a little ceremony his first game. But the kid is not ready to play in the NBA. He should be in the G League so he can play basketball. He's not gonna get better sitting on the bench. And also, this thing where he's only gonna play homes games. It's stupid, it's not fair to him. It's not fair to the team. Can you imagine the coach of that team? You come off a road trip and you have a player you haven't seen in a week or two. And then you probably feel like you gotta play him. I don't think they are doing Bronny any favors. They have just handled this thing very bad. It's a bad look for the Lakers. I really like everything LeBron has done. But it's a bad look for him (too) in my opinion."
While Barkley is known to be a critic of just about everything and everyone, this echoes a sentiment that has been popularly shared. Many people felt Bronny wasn’t even deserving of his No. 55 overall selection in the NBA Draft, let alone playing on Opening Night and spending half of his time with the parent Lakers.
Bronny should spend a majority of his time in the G League developing. But the Lakers spent a large portion of their offseason touting a new player development strategy, and perhaps it’s best to wait and see if that system is effective as is.
Austin Reaves: Lakers in good spirits
The Lakers met their familiar foe the Denver Nuggets on Saturday at Crypto.com Arena with the hopes of a new season and head coach making a difference.
Unfortunately, the second half was very familiar as they looked mentally checked out. Their offense grew stagnant and went away from what was working, which Denver took advantage of, a common script in the Nuggets' last 13 wins against the Lakers.
Now, it feels like a six-game winning streak was a distant memory with two consecutive deflating losses. However, Austin Reaves tried to paint a positive outlook as the team is still four games above .500.
"What are we, 10-6? We're still in a good spot, good spirits," he said. "I know you're going to, unfortunately, have games like this. Games like the last game. There's a lot of [games], 82 games is a lot of games. Like I said, unfortunately, we're going to have some like this and [some like] the last game. You just have to bounce back and go compete as hard as you can the next game."
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