Lakers rumors: Bronny James will only play in NBA G League home games | News, scores, highlights, stats and rumors

After making his G League debut with the South Bay Lakers on Saturday night, Bronny James will only be a part-time player for the club going forward.

In the latest episode of The Hoop Collective Podcast (starts at 11:45 p.m.), ESPN’s Brian Windhorst and Dave McMenamin explained that James will only play in home games for the G League club.

“Like on that scale, this is nothing. But I’m going, Dave, I’m going to put on the brakes, all is well on the Bronny front with this thing happening right now,” Windhorst said. “That means, from what I understand, he will only play in the South Bay Lakers home games.”

McMenamin did say that based on a conversation he had with South Bay Lakers president Joey Buss, there is some flexibility on using James depending on how many players they have available on a given night:

“So I agree with your assessment of the situation. I will say that I interviewed Joey Buss, the CEO and president of the South Bay Lakers, during Saturday’s game against Utah or Salt Lake City Stars about how Bronny’s time will be And for the record, he said that we will take everything into consideration if there are times when we come across bodies, that could play a role in the injuries, that could play a role in where he is assigned, where it schedule is the number of games in a given week for South Bay versus number of games for the Lakers.

“So to be clear, the Lakers have not said he will definitively prioritize Laker road games over wherever the South Bay Lakers play. We have to say that.”

This isn’t a total surprise, as ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on Nov. 7 that when the Los Angeles Lakers added James to the G League, the plan was for him to play in “just G League home games while shuttling between the Lakers and the G League’. South Bay.”

Lakers head coach JJ Redick said on Oct. 25 that the 20-year-old would shuttle between the NBA club and the G League after their first road trip of the regular season.

This plan allowed the Lakers to accomplish two things with James. He made his NBA debut playing with LeBron James in the season opener on October 22 against the Minnesota Timberwolves. They became the first father-son duo to play in an NBA game together.

During the road trip, Bronny got playing time when the Lakers visited the Cleveland Cavaliers on Oct. 30, the team his father played for when he was born in 2004 and spent 11 seasons in two stints.

Those were the first two games James played. He would eventually play four more games before being assigned to South Bay. The USC alum scored six points, grabbed three rebounds, dished out four assists and had two steals in his G League debut on Saturday.

South Bay’s longest streak of road games is six, but stretches over four weeks. The Lakers’ games include games against the Valley Suns on December 12-13, Cleveland Charge on December 27-28 and Mexico City Capitanes on January 3-4.

The Lakers’ next game is Friday against the Santa Cruz Warriors in Santa Cruz. They return home on Sunday to take on the Kings.