LeBron and Bronny James turned down historic All-Star offer
NY Post
Bronny James has spoken — if indirectly — and he says he’s got bigger goals than playing puppet at the NBA All-Star game.
“LeBron James and Bronny James were sought out by the league … to participate in the Skills Challenge during All-Star Weekend,” NBA insider Chris Haynes said Thursday, “but I was told that invitation was turned down.”
Bronny was also invited to play with the G-League Rising Stars team, but that offer was declined as well, Haynes reports.
LeBron, 40, and Bronny, 20, would have become the first father-son duo to compete alongside one another in the Skills Competition.
And while that’s history, sure, it’s chump-history compared to that which the Jameses made at the beginning of the season when they became the first father-son duo to share an NBA court.
So, while the elder James will be jet-setting out to the rat-infested Paris of the West to buddy up with the league’s other All-Stars — including the first Knickerbocker starting duo in 50 years — his first-born will be at home. Or, more likely, the gym.
This was near the end of a magnificent American life, and he’d been battling lung and prostate cancer for some time, but Pee Wee Reese was absolutely going to get in the car and make the drive from Louisville to Kansas City. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was honoring his dear friend Jackie Robinson, and Reese knew that meant seeing so many friends from the old days.
The pity is, at this point, the greatness we are watching in real time is threatened every week to be reduced to a footnote. We are witnesses to history, to the rarest form of extended success in a time of professional sport that’s supposed to be ruled by parity. But every year we have to deal with something else first.