24 ( Caris LeVert) were dealt for non-stars at the 2022 deadline. 5 overall pick for a 34-year-old Charles Oakley are long gone, picks in the middle of the first round are dealt for non-stars somewhat frequently. While the days of Toronto giving up a No. James probably won't be able to point guard an elite offense in his 40s, but there's little evidence suggesting he can't be a significant part of one at that point.Įven a non-superstar version of James, earning below market value on what will likely be a minimum or mid-level contract, is worth a decent first-round pick based on what those picks tend to net on the trade market. He's made up for it by becoming a significantly better jump shooter and retaining his game-breaking passing ability. Yet overall, James is scoring 29.1 points per game.
#GET IT DONE SON FREE#
He's averaging a career-low 5.6 free throw attempts per game, for instance, and a commensurate drop in drives per game suggests that his athletic decline is limiting how often he can attack the basket. James should theoretically decline with each passing season, and in some ways, he already is. 8 overall pick would be expected to in the first four years of their career. In just 41 games on a broken roster, James has produced roughly as much as the No. Well … James has produced 6.6 wins above replacement by their standard this season alone. 8 overall pick is expected to produce 6.8 wins above replacement using FiveThirtyEight's WAR metric. Over the four-year duration of their rookie contracts, the No. What he found was that while almost every slot had produced great players, the median return on most picks was fairly underwhelming. Last June, The Ringer's Zach Kram measured the typical value of each slot in the NBA Draft lottery. In fact, James could probably turn his son, a fringe prospect at this moment, into one of the higher selections in the 2024 NBA Draft. From a purely strategic standpoint, getting even one year out of a quadragenarian LeBron is well worth the investment of a single draft pick. The cynical view of LeBron's declaration is that he is well aware of his son's ranking as a prospect and is dangling the carrot of his own farewell tour as an enticement for some team to draft Bronny. will enter the NBA Draft in 2024 as a prospect who, on merits, would be unlikely to be selected in the first round.Īnd that's where this gets interesting. The odds therefore suggest that James Jr. Even if he does, every extra year he waits is one in which he could suffer an injury that prevents their teaming up. He's probably not going to want to stick around much longer than that. Barring a surprise change to the NBA's one-and-done rule, his son won't become eligible to be drafted until 2024 at the earliest. His current Lakers contract expires in 2023. The elder James has not set a definitive timeline for the end of his career. That might not be a luxury Bronny has, though, because his more famous father is already tying the end of his own career to the beginning of his son's.
#GET IT DONE SON PROFESSIONAL#
Were a prospect of that caliber not named "LeBron James," he would probably be expected to spend multiple years in college developing his skill set and preparing to transition from collegiate star to professional role player. It's fairly low for a prospect literally named "LeBron James." A four-star ranking is nothing to sneeze at for most prospects. Now? He's not even the highest-ranked son of a former Cleveland Cavalier in that class, as the 2023 crop is headlined by DJ Wagner, son of LeBron's former teammate DaJuan Wagner. 19 in the class of 2023 as recently as September 2020. His standing as a prospect has slipped since he reached the high school level, as 247 ranked him No. Midway through his junior season at Los Angeles powerhouse Sierra Canyon, 247Sports ranks James as the 34th-best player in his high school class.
LeBron James Jr., on the other hand, is something a bit more conventional. He was a prodigy identified as a future superstar years before he was eligible to become a professional and about as close to a sure thing as young athletes ever get. was the top-ranked NBA prospect in his class from practically the moment he could pick up a basketball.
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