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People should stop talking, all at once and right away, about Bronny James. LeBron James' son, who is now also his Los Angeles Lakers teammate after being picked 55th overall in June’s NBA Draft, is simply not worth discussing—if, of course, analyzing or understanding basketball is your interest. Like virtually every player selected that late, he is a fringe talent, in need of time to develop—if, that is, he ever becomes a rotational player in the league. That’s a large If. He is playing limited preseason minutes, and struggling, which is to be expected for a player of his profile.

Assembling a statistical NBA resume for James is, at this point, an act that requires some craft. Preseason stats are not officially logged by most public websites; most likely, this is because, like the games they occur in, these numbers do not matter. Nevertheless, I can say that Bronny is 1-for-11 from the field over a grand total of 36 minutes, through three games. It’s not a great start, nor is it a horrible one. It’s not a start at all. The games do not count yet. When they do, Bronny may not play any minutes, save for a ceremonial father-son photo-op occasion. His impact on the Lakers’ bottom line is, now and later, immaterial.

This has not stopped major sports media companies from discussing the 20-year-old relentlessly. Far from it. They are obsessed with him, and apparently so are their consumers; these companies don’t abuse topics by accident. In covering James’ non-career like it’s the Watergate scandal, they’re reinforcing positive developments in their internet traffic, as a part of their constant pursuit of better financial arrangements with advertisers. This, not basketball, is their game. And for the readers, listeners, and viewers perpetuating demand for this junk, basketball is not the concern either. Theirs is a familiar tabloid madness; a deranged quest to make something out of the gross collision between their personal resentments and other people being rich and famous.

It’s nasty, and it’s boring, and it won’t stop. My plea is in vain. The waterfall of rancid nonsense will continue to flood through NBA coverage infrastructure, drowning anyone with a brain. Bronny will likely be fine either way. His dad is a billionaire, and while his rookie contract is miniscule by NBA standards, and might be the last serious one he gets, it’s still worth at least $5 million over the next three years, which is more than most people ever earn in their lives. Do not weep for the young man. Weep for yourself, because you have to keep hearing about the crumbs of his playing career like they’re a feast.

Shed a tear, too, for the many lesser known young basketball players, receiving the more serious pierce from the sport’s vampire fangs. While Bronny’s likeness gets slapped around by ESPN’s daily brain-dead, post-thinking fervor, one of their front-facing broadcast employees is doing something considerably more suspect to these more anonymous teenaged hoopers. In an important new report by a journalist from his own company—yes, they still employ a few—Kendrick Perkins has been identified as the founder of an entity called Nilly.

The company’s name is an unclever play on “NIL.” This acronym stands for “Name, Image, and Likeness,” which pre-professional athletes have been enabled to monetize, particularly since a 2021 Supreme Court decision opened the floodgates. Previously, 90’s UCLA legend Ed O’Bannon—who had a brief career as a pro after being picked 9th overall in 1995, only to immediately run into injury issues—began this legal crusade with a less broadly applied victory in 2015. Now that the pre-NBA money is flowing for real, it seems that Perkins wants his cut of it.

Perkins’ partner-in-investment is Chris Ricciardi, whose infamy derives from his advancement of the mortgage-backed securities that exploded the American economy in 2008. The two are now applying a similar business model to the industry of amateur sports, and its newfound likeness-profit opportunities. Players are handed $50,000, with the stipulation that as much as 25 percent of any money earned from likeness will go to Nilly, depending on how successful they are. Ricciardi claims that players are unlikely to actually make Nilly any money, selling the enterprise as something closer to charity, but that doesn’t sound quite right next to the fact that Harlan Capital Partners has committed up to $200 million to the endeavor.

Like mortgages before them, players are now component parts in a dubious financial plot. Many of the project’s details remain fuzzy, and Dan Murphy, who wrote the report on it, suggests the whole ambition could be invalidated in a court of law. Players have already taken money from them, though, and who knows what kind of hook they could be on if Nilly does indeed dissolve. Because the company is seeking shares of income that didn’t exist until a few years ago, it exists in a gray zone, yet to be properly regulated or litigated. That’s where players are, too—working their bodies into possibly life-long pain as gold bars which might be holographs distorting predatory schemes dangle in front of them. The Law has not decided yet.

It is this murky land we should seek to travel and understand more, when it comes to what upstart athletes are navigating. Not the fortunate son of the greatest 21st century basketball legend—Bronny is a bit player in a stupid palace intrigue that won’t go away. There is time for both stories, of course, but no one can say there’s a good balance between them. The world that future NBA players move through is changing rapidly, and chaotically, and its story-telling apparatus is focused instead on gossip rag idolatry.