LeBron Says Playing With Son Bronny ‘Means Everything’

It was a historic sports moment and also an emotional night for LeBron James and his son Bronny.

“For a father, it means everything,” LeBron, 39, told ESPN after they became the first father-son duo ever to play in the same NBA game together on Sunday, Oct. 6.

The moment happened at the beginning of the second quarter of the Los Angeles Lakers preseason game against the Phoenix Suns.

“For someone who didn’t have that growing up, to be able to have that influence on your kids and have influence on your son, be able to have moments with your son, and ultimately to be able to work with your son, I think that’s one of the greatest things that a father can ever hope for or wish for,” the four-time NBA Champion said.

LeBron told reporters after the game that his coach and former teammate JJ Redick told him he planned to put Bronny in Sunday night’s game at some point.

“The moment when we came out of the timeout and he was picking up full court and I went up —because my guy was taking the ball out. We stood next to each other and I kind of looked at him, and it was just like, ‘Is this The Matrix or something?’ It just didn’t feel real,” LeBron said.

The emotional moment – which also marked Bronny’s preseason NBA debut, on his 20th birthday, no less – hit home for James, who didn’t have a relationship with his biological father.

James was raised by his mother Gloria Marie James in Akron, Ohio, moving seven times by the time he was 5 years old.

In a 2014 interview on Today, LeBron said he felt as though he “always had that mother and father inside my mother, so I never was a kid that was kind of like, ‘Where is my father?’ “ 

“[Gloria] gave me strength to a point where I never even had to think about that, and I have no idea where she got it from,” LeBron said at the time. “To this day, I still won’t even ask her, but she’s definitely the champion.”

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In another interview with GQ that year, LeBron said his dad’s absence in his life is “part of the reason I grew up to become who I am,” and that he uses his lack of a relationship with his father as “fuel.”

LeBron has made it a point to inspire Bronny in a different way, speaking openly in the past about how he wants to play in the NBA with his oldest son. “I want to be on the court with him,” LeBron said in 2022. “I think that would an unbelievable moment.”

After Sunday night’s game, LeBron celebrated the historic moment on social media. On his Instagram Stories, LeBron shared a post from the NBA that showed a side-by-side photo of him sitting on the bench with Bronny when he was a young boy, compared with a photo of them sitting together on the Los Angeles Lakers bench as teammates on Sunday night. “History in the making!” the post said.

And on X, LeBron went all caps to showcase his emotion: “WOW THAT WAS SURREAL!!” the proud father wrote.