Bronny James has easily become the most talked-about second round pick in NBA history. The Los Angeles Lakers selected him at No. 55 overall in the 2024 NBA Draft, and it has since been non-stop discourse surrounding whether or not he is fit to be in the league and what he can contribute to the Lakers either in the G League or with the parent team.
But lost in all of the conversation surrounding Bronny is the fact that he missed out on a good chunk of his freshman season at USC after suffering an unexpected cardiac arrest in the summer of 2023. James has only 25 college games under his belt, as he spent the rest of that summer and the start of the year just trying to figure out if basketball was still a part of his future.
Bronny went into detail recently on what must have been one of the scariest moments of his young life, the immediate fallout and how he’s feeling today as he gears up for his first professional campaign, via Hanif Abdurraqib of Men’s Health:
When Bronny talks about “the heart incident,” as he refers to it, he momentarily tenses up, drops eye contact. He tells me that it just felt like a normal day. He had his smoothie and went to go to a summer workout on USC’s campus before school started and the season kicked off in earnest. Midway through running drills, he says, he blacked out, doesn’t remember anything else. He had suffered a cardiac arrest. When I ask if he was concerned, in the moment, about his ability to play again, he says, “At the point when it happened, there were a whole bunch of categories that what had happened could fall under, so yeah. There were a whole lot of emotions, but . . .” He trails off here, just for a moment, before snapping back to escape the thought, talking with renewed energy about his recovery. “I got real on top of my routines to get back to where I was. I had to do breathing exercises and stuff. It was a total reset. I have to stay on top of my heart medications, and”—he pauses to laugh a little bit here—“I got my heart pillow.”
A heart pillow?
“When I coughed, it used to hurt a little bit, but you get this pillow, and when you cough you just hold it so it doesn’t hurt.
“My days aren’t normal anymore,” he continues. “I still feel like I’m getting back, I’m getting back to where I was.”
This is not only devastating to hear from a human perspective — that an impossible to control or predict health event is still having effects on him over a year later — but it also puts an extra layer of disrespect for those who choose to criticize Bronny.
At 20 years old with a recent cardiac arrest, James saw an opportunity to make a name for himself, boost his personal finances and get the chance to call himself a professional athlete. Perhaps he didn’t want to take the risk on another year in college, and felt he was better served developing while already in the NBA.
Hopefully, Bronny can soon get back to the player he felt like he was before the cardiac arrest.
LeBron wants Bronny James to speak for himself
At a recent practice, LeBron James was asked about how his oldest son would handle the outside noise and responded accordingly.
“You got to ask him,” LeBron said. “That’s a grown man. Ask him how he’s handling it. And then we go from there. But he’s a grown man. He’s a professional. He can handle all this pressure himself. But we know why — good or bad why — the attention is here.”
Ultimately, Bronny can speak for himself and does not need LeBron to cover for him. While it may make sense for the 39-year-old to defend his son and Bronny’s ability to handle this outside pressure, this response was the right move.
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