It’s already unfair that LeBron James Jr. gets his father’s prodigious athleticism as a baseline for his basketball skills. Here’s what’s worse: He also gets his father as a part-time coach and hype man, complete with the one-off run through the North Coast Blue Chips layup line.
Here was LeBron James (the elder) before the Blue Chips’ Saturday afternoon AAU matchup:
Seriously, just check out those dunks. LeBron is throwing down a veritable dunk contest warmup basically because he can.
While that would intimidating for any player, at any level, imagine watching that as a middle schooler preparing to face off against his son?
It’s not as if the Blue Chips would enter any matchup as underdogs, so it likely won’t ever be possible to disaggregate the Chips’ success with any amount of intimidation brought on by LeBron as opposed to the on-court success of Bronny and his uber-talented pre-teen teammates.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. Bronny and the Blue Chips keep winning, while LeBron Sr. gets to keep celebrating. If that includes future layup line dunks, well, at least we all get to see highlights of the show.