Scotty Pippen Jr. gets honest on Bronny James' rise from G-league to NBA: "He started a little shaky but..." 

There are plenty of similarities between Memphis Grizzlies guard Scotty Pippen Jr. and LA Lakers rookie Bronny James. Aside from having fathers who are NBA champions, they've had nearly similar paths.

Both attended Sierra Canyon in high school and just like Pippen Jr. did in his rookie year, James is spending some time in the G-League. Pippen Jr. briefly spoke about his time playing in the G-league on the "Sloane Knows" podcast on Monday.

During that time, he also mentioned how well James has been performing as of late.

"You're going to see a lot more guys in the G-League come to the NBA and do special things," Pippen Jr. said. "For someone like Bronny I feel like it's good that he's able to go down there and just play. You know at first he started a little shaky but he's putting up numbers now and people really aren't saying too much." (20:59-21:13)

Bronny James has split his time between the G-League and the LA Lakers this season. On the main roster, he's only averaged 4.2 minutes of playing time in 18 games played. In these 18 games, he has averaged 1.4 points, 0.4 rebounds and 0.4 assists.

However, it is a different story when he's playing for the South Bay Lakers. In eight games, he's averaged 21.1 ppg, 5.4 rpg and 5.3 apg.

Whether his success in the G-League will translate to the main roster remains to be seen. However, his fans can take it as a good sign that he's shown some flashes of putting up good numbers.

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Scotty Pippen Jr.'s G-League stats and NBA stats during his rookie season are eerily similar to Bronny James'

Scotty Pippen Jr. is a solid backup point guard for the Memphis Grizzlies but he didn't always enjoy the playing time that he has now. He began his career by going undrafted in the 2022 NBA Draft before being signed by the LA Lakers to a two-way contract.

In his first season in the NBA, he played only six games, averaging just 2.3 points, 0.7 rebounds and 0.3 assists. He spent most of his time with the South Bay Lakers where he put up averages of 21.4 ppg, 4.1 rpg and 5.6 apg.

A closer look at these stats shows that they are rather close to Bronny James' performance.

So far this season for the Grizzlies, he has averaged 20.0 minutes per game in 63 contests. He's putting up 9.0 ppg, 3.3 rpg and 4.2 apg.