Father and son: LeBron and Bronny James make NBA history as a duo

You need to be a stone-hearted Grinch to have not felt at least a twinge of emotion watching LeBron James and his son, Bronny, check into Tuesday night’s season opener between the Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves—the first father and son duo to play together in NBA history.

James père et fils, ages 39 and 20, numbers 23 and 9, entering seasons 22 and 1, jointly entered the game with four minutes left in the second quarter and the Lakers up by 16. It was a brief cameo for Bronny—a little less than three minutes in a game the Lakers eventually won 110-103. The only near father-son highlight happened when a driving LeBron flipped his son a perfect pass for a 3-point shot, which he sadly bricked. Oh well. (In the sure-to-come movie, it will be a swish.)

I didn’t get misty, though I suspect some Laker die-hards teared up when they saw Bronny’s jumper shudder off the rim.

None of us will pretend there wasn’t some goofy front-office engineering to make this pairing happen—the mediocre Lakers, with their multiple deficiencies, using a second-round draft pick to take the unproven, undersized son of their aging, influential star.

But who cares for now? Tuesday night was for every sports parent who’s suffered through roster cuts, endless car trips, missing shoes and mouth guards and can’t believe the NBA’s oldest active player is getting to realize the dream of playing alongside a child.

It’s especially touching knowing that 15 months ago, the younger James suffered a cardiac arrest as a freshman at USC.

That’s the sort of nightmare which scars a family and puts any basketball game into useful perspective. This—Bronny matriculating to the pro ranks, medically cleared, on the same team as his dear old gray-bearded Dad?

Again: Come on. It’s good news.

It’s a bigger deal for LeBron than Bronny, because the sentimental stuff is always going to be bigger for parents. James, raised by a single mother, has built his adult life around being a committed father. One day he will leave basketball as a Hall of Famer and a billionaire entrepreneur, but I suspect when James surveys his career, his proudest accomplishment will be his presence in the life of his three children.

He’s an awkward sports parent, true. Many of us are. James has long vacillated between trying to be measured about his children and bragging about them like a one-man PR agency. He clumsily put pressure on Bronny when he began speculating about playing with him in the NBA—unhelpful hype that James admitted earned him a scolding from his wife, Savannah.

Dad chilled out, temporarily. LeBron stressed that Bronny would chart his own path, but then his fingerprints were all over Los Angeles’s decision to draft him in June. It may have been liberating for Bronny to strike out on his own—latch on with a franchise far from pops—but the Laker-land machination felt inevitable. It was always going this way, wasn’t it?

To state the obvious: Bronny is far from the can’t-miss wunderkind his father was coming out of Akron, Ohio. He could miss. He’s an iffy shooter who aspires to be a good defender and reliable rotation player, not a 20-time epochal All-Star like LeBron. He’s not the top Laker rookie—that’s likely the former Tennessee Volunteer Dalton Knecht. It’s possible Bronny will spend chunks of the season in the minors of the Lakers’s G League affiliate, which isn’t a bad idea.

He’s realistic about his limitations. People around Bronny describe a coachable kid without aversion to hard work—and none of the entitlement you might expect from a superstar scion who grew up in privilege.

Credit to Mom and Dad for that. But mostly credit to Bronny himself, a young athlete thrust into an impossible comparison to his famous father, pounded by social media scrutiny no adolescent should endure.

From here it may get ruthless. Tuesday’s debut happened in the cozy embrace of a home audience, but crowds on the road will be eager to remind Bronny of who he isn’t. He will be mocked for his mistakes, ridiculed for riding the bench as his father rounds 40, the Geezer Gandalf of the league. Bronny will be derided as the NBA’s premier “nepo baby," even as children ride parental coattails in nearly every industry.

Bronny’s NBA baptism will be an interesting test for Dad. LeBron has spent most of his life under a harsh glare, minor missteps like his “Take my talents to South Beach" press conference hysterically warped into national crises. He knows better than anyone how cruel it can get, and he’ll need to avoid the parent’s natural impulse to protect a child. He has to let Bronny fail and pick himself up, multiple times.

He has already installed some rules. “He cannot call me ‘Dad’ in the workplace," LeBron said during the preseason. “Once we leave [the] practice facility…I can be ‘Dad’ again."

For LeBron, this must feel euphoric. How can it not? Ken Griffey Sr. once described the opportunity to play with his son Ken Jr. on the Seattle Mariners as “the best thing that’s ever happened to me." Griffey Sr. and Junior were in the Laker crowd on opening night—two of the only people to really know how extraordinary this is.

Bronny isn’t the prospect Junior was, of course. Ken Sr. and Ken Jr. played only 51 games together before Dad hung them up in 1991, leaving Junior to blossom. Indefatigable LeBron has yet to signal his own retirement—he seems content with this mismatched team that’s largely of his own construction, now with a new coach, J.J. Redick, a former LeBron podcast partner. Tuesday night might be mostly a power flex by one of the game’s greatest ever, but the union can only last so long. Another dad, Father Time, always gets his say. Eventually, Bronny James will have to play alone.

Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com