{"id":630020,"date":"2026-05-08T01:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T01:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/630020\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T01:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T01:41:08","slug":"why-bronny-james-isnt-playing-more-for-lakers-in-playoffs-vs-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/630020\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bronny James isn’t playing more for Lakers in playoffs vs. Thunder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Bronny James isn’t playing more for Lakers in playoffs vs. Thunder<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> are still shorthanded against the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Luka Doncic<\/a> remains out with injury, but that’s not helping Bronny James<\/a>‘ playing time.<\/p>\n

LeBron<\/a>‘s son got some ample run late in the regular season, but that hasn’t translated to the playoffs, particularly after Austin Reaves<\/a>‘ return.<\/p>\n

Don’t expect that to change too much soon.<\/p>\n

Bronny got just three minutes in the Game 1 loss to OKC, and there isn’t a great reason for head coach JJ Redick<\/a> to up that total too much.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0WWE legend wants Lakers to trade Luka Doncic<\/a><\/p>\n

Why isn’t Bronny James playing more?<\/p>\n

The reality is that when the Lakers are mostly healthy, Bronny isn’t a key part of the rotation.<\/p>\n

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He played a lot late in the regular season when both Doncic and Reaves were out.<\/p>\n

When even one of them is back, though, that removes a lot of opportunity from the guard rotation.<\/p>\n

The Lakers currently have four healthy guards ahead of Bronny in the rotation:<\/p>\n

Yes, LaRavia can play the small forward spot, too, and so can Smart, but in shortened playoff rotations it’s hard to do the math and get Bronny a lot of minutes.<\/p>\n

Besides, he isn’t a super impactful scorer or playmaker. If Bronny isn’t doing positive things defensively, he isn’t a particularly key player to have on the floor.<\/p>\n

With Jarred Vanderbilt<\/a> sustaining a finger injury, Bronny may get a chance to play a bit more.<\/p>\n

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But as long as Reaves is playing, Bronny’s play time most likely won’t be too high.<\/p>\n

More NBA news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why Bronny James isn’t playing more for Lakers in playoffs vs. Thunder originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[11654,1054,17813,31765,66655,43361,1055,3014,47174,20467,355,6402,99],"class_list":["post-630020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-austin-reaves","tag-bronny-james","tag-jake-laravia","tag-jarred-vanderbilt","tag-jj-redick","tag-lebron","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-luka-doncic","tag-luke-kennard","tag-marcus-smart","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}