The rookies took distinct routes to the NBA and face different pressures – and aren’t they lucky?
EL SEGUNDO — Life isn’t like a math problem; you can take wildly different routes to arrive at the same destination.
Saw that Tuesday afternoon at the Lakers’ training facility, where two young men sat beside each other in director’s chairs, answering reporters’ questions about themselves and their journeys so far and their hopes for where they’ll go next – together, as teammates now, despite their radically different pathways to get to this point.
The steal of the draft and the star of the draft, selected at Nos. 17 and 55, respectively, one of whom took the scenic route while the other flew direct.
To get here, first-rounder Dalton Knecht avoided highways and took in the sights. The 6-foot-5 guard dressed up in a white button-up and slacks is a Tennessee graduate by way of Northern Colorado by way of Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colorado.
An unknown out of high school, he’s happy to be conceptual proof of what can happen when someone stays the course, keeps maturing and growing – and growing, from 5-6 as a high school sophomore to 6-3 as a senior, in his case – and never stops believing.
“Ever since I touched the basketball, I knew that I could do it, it was just a matter of how,” he said Tuesday. “My journey’s not like everybody else’s, but that’s OK. Everybody else has a journey of their own. So, just creating my path. And, like I said, creating my path is something special and a lot of kids will look up to it.”
And Bronny James is Bronny James. The 6-1 guard drove a faster car, took some shortcuts, avoided traffic and showed up right on time, in time to get hired to work alongside his 39-year-old dad in the family business of basketball.
The 19-year-old – rocking dark sweats, sneakers and spectacles on Tuesday – spent one year at USC by way of powerhouse Sierra Canyon High School, but as King James’ firstborn, he’s been famous his whole life.
Bronny is a study in not getting thrown off course or blinded by the limelight, in running toward pressure and scrutiny.
His story, in his words: “To be honest, just living by the days. Trying not to care about what other people think about me because there’s a lot of people that have something to say. But yeah, I’m just taking it by the day and staying sane while doing it.”
If pressure is a privilege, then the four men featured at Tuesday’s news conference are maybe the luckiest in all of L.A.
There was Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ general manager, whose job is to improve a roster while navigating the “apron world” imposed by some harsh penalties associated with the new collective bargaining agreement – and to do it with one of basketball’s most demanding fan bases growing increasingly impatient.
There was JJ Redick, the Lakers’ first-time head coach and chum of LeBron’s, whose job will be to steer the roster, however it’s constructed, close enough to a title to satisfy one of basketball’s most demanding and impatient fan bases.
And there were the two rookies, who have plenty to prove too. To that fan base and everyone else watching.
In Knecht’s case, there are all the nonbelievers who didn’t recognize his abilities early on – and on June 26 during the NBA draft, when the player who last season flourished in the SEC just as he had in the Big Sky and NJCAA Division Region 9 went and fell out of lottery-pick range and all the way to the Lakers.
He’s an underdog, a dude who will deal with internal pressure, because until recently, most people didn’t know who he was to have an opinion of him – even if he had a healthy opinion of himself.
In Bronny’s case, it’s the nonbelievers waiting for him to fail, half the population seeming to be rooting for it.
It’s hard to imagine what would appease the masses who see only nepotism. Output that normally would qualify a 55th pick as a success – productive minutes defensively and a couple of buckets off the bench – likely won’t win over anyone who isn’t swayed by proclamations like Redick’s: “Rob and I did not give Bronny anything. Bronny has earned this… Bronny has earned this through hard work.”
If there’s a trait I most hope Bronny has inherited from his father, it’s not his basketball brilliance – which he didn’t much want to focus on Tuesday, anyway: “I had my own basketball stuff going on,” Bronny said when asked what he’s learned from watching his dad at work, “so I wasn’t really in my dad’s pocket all day, following him around the Lakers’ facility.”
I hope, for his sake, that he shares his dad’s ability to deal with pressure – not even to meet and exceed great expectations, as LeBron has, but to just bear that burden.
Maybe that seems like an unenviable position. Maybe it is a lot.
But then you remember, however they got here, these guys are setting off on their careers as “workers,” as Redick stressed, complimentarily. They’re well-compensated basketball-playing employees of the Los Angeles Lakers.
And, oh yeah, all that pressure that comes with the job? However you calculate it, a real privilege.
