I’ve already talked about how out of hand high school recruiting is these days. You have Rivals.com profiling 6th graders, you have middle school kids committing to college programs before they take a snap on the high school level, and now apparently schools are even offering ten year old kids.
Now granted the ten year old kid in this case is Lebron James’ son Bronny. It is probably a safe bet he would have received these offers in the long run, but to already be recruiting a kid so young is ridiculous.
“Yeah, he’s already got some offers from colleges,” James told the media duringCavaliers shoot-around prior Tuesday’s game against the Pistons. “It’s pretty crazy. It should be a violation. You shouldn’t be recruiting 10-year-old kids.”
Bronny hasn’t even reached middle school yet, but he’s already shown flashes of greatness — flashes that remind James of himself at that age.
“He plays just like I did,” James said. “He has great awareness, and he’d rather pass first and set guys up. Most kids nowadays just want to score.”
While it’s clear Bronny has a bright future ahead of him when it comes to playing ball, dad doesn’t plan to rush him into anything. James said that he wasn’t too concerned about weight training during his high school playing days and just wanted to be a kid. He also admitted that he didn’t really start taking good care of his body until he was 24 years old.
James joked: “I ate McDonalds my first couple years in the NBA, I didn’t stretch, I didn’t ice, it didn’t matter. I was 18, I could do whatever I wanted to.”
While I’m certain Bronny has a promising basketball career ahead of him, there is absolutely no reason for the a child of that age to even be thinking about college. He should just be out there having fun with the rest of the kids his age and not being pitched on why he should sign on the dotted line years from now.