The most impressive player wearing a Los Angeles Lakers uniform this summer has been Darius Bazley. The former No. 23 overall pick just spent a season in China, but if his performance in Las Vegas and at the California Classic is any indication, he’s ready for another shot in the NBA. Sure, the 27-point double-double he posted against the Spurs in the final California Classic game was nice, but where Bazley has truly stood out has been his defense.
Bazley is an elite athlete with ideal wing size and a seven-foot wingspan. He’s flown around the court in these summer league games for the Lakers, and in their most recent outing against the New Orleans Pelicans, racked up five blocks and two steals in a victory.
What does this have to do with Bronny James? Well, James is theoretically in the same class of summer leaguer as Bazley. While the top picks like Cooper Flagg are there to showcase future stardom, the stakes are relatively low for them in Vegas. For everyone else, summer league is critical. For the second-round picks and undrafted free agents and journeyman veterans, it’s a chance to show the league not that you’re a future star, but that you have a clear niche, an easy way to fit in and contribute to an NBA team. Right now, Bazley is doing that.
Is Bronny James? The answer, at this stage, is probably not. That isn’t to say he’s playing badly. He’s grown meaningfully since last summer and the brief glimpses he showed at the NBA level last season after being one of the most famous second-round picks in history. That growth is just manifesting in areas that mean less to the Lakers, and likely the rest of the league, than Bazley’s. It’s his comfort on the ball that has stood out in summer league, making better reads in pick-and-roll and keeping the Laker offense humming.
“Yeah, we want him to play on the ball,” Lakers assistant and Vegas Summer League coach Lindsay Harding said, according to Brad Turner of The Los Angeles Times. “Especially in tight moments, I like the ball in his hands and I want him to make those decisions.”
James has 22 points and five assists through two games in Las Vegas thus far, but those on-ball numbers, from a practical perspective, just don’t mean all that much to the Lakers. Even in a world in which he earns meaningful rotation minutes, how much would he ever have the ball? The Lakers have Luka Dončić, Austin Reaves and, at least for the time being, James’ far more famous and accomplished father, LeBron James. Those on-ball skills matter. They just aren’t going to be a ticket to playing time for the younger James.
In all likelihood, he has only one plausible path to minutes at the NBA level. He has to make 3s and defend like crazy. Thus far, the 3s aren’t coming. He’s 4 for 18 from deep in four total summer-league games, and that shooting has been a mixed bag at basically every level. He shot 38% in 11 G-League games last season, but he was 9 for 32 in the NBA and 16 for 60 at USC. None of these are reliable samples, but the burden of proof is always on a young player to prove that he can shoot. Thus far, we don’t know that to be the case, and until it’s proven, nobody is going to guard him in meaningful games.
His father might be a heliocentric ball-handler, but the idea for Bronny has always been developing into a 3-and-D role player. The “D” portion of that equation is further along than the “3” at this point, but comes with more obvious limitations. James is only 6-foot-2. He’s got a much longer 6-foot-7 wingspan, but there just aren’t many high-level defenders at his height in the NBA. It’s doable. Take James’ draftmate, Jamal Shead, who went 10 picks earlier in 2024. He’s even smaller at a flat six feet. But he has uncommon strength for a guard that small, and more importantly, he is the most intense player in every game he plays in. There’s nothing wrong with James’ motor, but it doesn’t jump off of the screen like it does for someone like Shead. That’s the bar for smaller, defensive guards.
Those limitations stand in stark contrast to someone like Bazley, whose physical tools allow him to do basically anything defensively. “Bazley is an amazing defender,” Harding said. “He can guard on-ball. He can guard the point guard. He can guard the center. He does a great job off the ball. Sometimes defenders are great on-ball and not on-ball and vice versa, but he can do everything. He’s long. We need him for every position and they were huge blocks.”
Praise like that for a Summer Leaguer is rare, but that kind of versatility is exactly what the Lakers need after losing key wing Dorian Finney-Smith in free agency. At the moment, though, the Lakers can’t even legally sign Bazley to a deal. Bazley has five years of NBA experience, which makes him ineligible for a two-way contract. Yet the Lakers, with less than $1 million in available room beneath their first-apron hard cap, can’t sign him for the minimum either. They could clear a spot by waiving Shake Milton on a non-guaranteed deal, but they are expected to use that chip to free up a roster spot for a veteran. They’ve been linked to defensive-minded guards and wings like De’Anthony Melton for that spot. In all likelihood, therefore, they’d need to actively clear a roster spot to keep Bazley beyond the summer.
There might be simple ways of doing that. Say the Lakers make a consolidation trade. They have over $40 million in expiring salary between Rui Hachimura, Gabe Vincent and Maxi Kleber, and Dalton Knecht was literally traded at the deadline before a failed Mark Williams physical killed the deal. Combine two or more of those players for one single wing (Andrew Wiggins is a name that comes up frequently), and suddenly, a roster spot for someone like Bazley opens up. For now, though, such a trade does not appear imminent, and if none come, another team could sign Bazley away from the Lakers.
Maybe Bazley isn’t a priority for the Lakers. While he would follow their trend of adding former first-rounders who didn’t work out with their original teams like Hachimura, Cam Reddish and Jaxson Hayes, he is, ultimately, a summer-league audition and not a high-priority prospect. But that raises a simple yet important question: what sort of priority is Bronny James at the moment?
A year ago, the answer was obvious if a tad unmeritocratic: he was the son of LeBron James, so it didn’t really matter. Giving him a roster spot was the cost of doing business with the greatest player of his generation. But whether it comes in the following months or in a year, it seems as though we’re barreling toward the end of the LeBron era in Lakerland, and if that’s the case, Bronny probably starts getting judged on a different scale.
Take away the famous name and who would you rather have: a No. 55 overall pick in his second season, improving but still without a clear role, or a former No. 23 overall pick lighting up summer league who may be several years older, but comes with more easily translatable skills for a small NBA role? There’s not exactly an obvious answer to that. There are plenty of second-round picks who have needed a few years to put it together, but recent success stories like Guerschon Yabusele‘s remind us that sufficiently talented former draft prospects often just need to find the right home to thrive in the NBA. Maybe that’s where Bazley is.
For now, the elder James is still a Laker. That means that Bronny likely will be too, and the hope this year will be that he earns his keep on the floor. There’s still some promise that he does so, and remember, he was a first-round prospect before his cardiac arrest derailed his lone collegiate season. Bronny James is not just an NBA nepo baby. He’s a viable NBA prospect. But if we’re judging him just as an NBA prospect, well, it’d be hard to watch what the Lakers have done so far this summer and come away believing that he’s a better one than Bazley is right now. In a simpler world, Bronny might be a trade candidate to clear a spot for Bazley. In the real one, he almost certainly won’t be. But that puts quite a bit more pressure on him than he dealt with last year. With his father’s time in Los Angeles likely nearing its end, the time for him to prove that he belongs is now, because if he doesn’t, the Lakers are eventually going to want to use his roster spot for someone who does.
