Lakers may already be paying the price for catering to Bronny James

Bronny James, son of NBA superstar Lebron James, was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers with the 55th pick of the 2024 NBA draft. Immediately, the spotlight shone even brighter on the 19-year-old as he entered the league in his father's shadow.

In college at USC, Bronny did not impress many. He averaged 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists. With this underwhelming stat line, a lot of people believe he was only drafted because of his father, not because of his talent.

Of course with Bronny and Lebron being the first father-son duo on the same team in NBA history, they are going to get a ton of media coverage. But the Lakers have already invested a lot of resources in his development and it's causing some waves.

Featuring Bronny on the Lakers Summer League team caused frustration

Much like college, Bronny James' performance through the first four games of the NBA Summer League left a lot to be desired. He averaged 4.3 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.8 assists. Bronny shot an astonishing 23 percent from the field and missed his first 15 3-point attempts.

An anonymous insider with the Lakers provided details to The Sun about how frustrating it was for the other players to see Bronny undeservingly on the main stage.

"That kind of tension didn't help the group of players to build chemistry. And you could feel that there was no unity between this group of guys as Bronny was the main guy and the others didn't feel that it was right, that he deserved that."

As if this didn't already give the Lakers a bad enough look, Bronny's reps made him unavaliable for the media on several occassions. Facing the media is part of being in the spotlight in the NBA.

Additionally per the insider, a player (who was not named for obvious reasons) spoke up about the summer league experience with Bronny James.

"I mean, he was treated as someone apart, not like all of us, and that is very annoying as we didn't feel any chemistry in this group of players. I ended up being very frustrated because I was never put in the best situation, or even put in some plays or game plans because they wanted Bronny to show his skills and shine."

First-year head coach JJ Redick could have his hands full in Los Angeles trying to manage the drama around Bronny James and lead the Lakers back to NBA Finals contention.