A man and his boy

 My dad and I used to play basketball together.

He played high school ball in Indiana in the 1940s (Go, you Montpelier Pacers!), because when you stood 6-3 and lived in Indiana in the 1940s, playing basketball was your sacred duty. So he played, and one time he missed a last-second shot that would have won his school a sectional, and he laid awake all night thinking about it. Because that was also what you did in Indiana.

Anyway, we'd go out in the driveway, and he'd hoist up his funny little 1940s quasi-jumper, and I'd hoist up my modern, mostly wayward jumper. Two generations; one game the tie that bound.

All of this is the Blob's meandering way of saying I'm totally OK with nepotism when it comes to basketball.

Nepotism, see, got LeBron James' son Bronny a place on the Los Angeles Lakers roster, and last night nepotism got LeBron something he'd been publicly dreaming about for a good space of years. With four minutes to play in the second quarter of the Lakers' regular-season opener last night, he and Bronny checked into the game.

Father and son. On the floor together in an official NBA game. For the first time in NBA history.

They were on the floor together for two minutes and 41 seconds before Bronny checked out. In that time, his dad set him up for an open 3-pointer he missed, and he was blocked by Rudy Gobert on a putback attempt, and he grabbed that one rebound. It was pretty much what you might expect from a kid who was the second-to-last pick in the NBA draft, and who averaged 4.2 points on a tick under 30 percent shooting in the preseason.

In other words: No, Bronny James is not really an NBA player. He's a work in progress  who ought to be, and likely will be at some point this season, buffing up his game in the G-League.

Because of that, there's been the usual griping from the usual cranks about what a charade this is all is. Mostly this has come from people who, for whatever reason, just don't like LeBron. Of course, they're the same people who'll ignore the way nepotism has lifted certain other people to heights for which they were clearly (and often painfully) unequipped.

Those voices,  thankfully, have been cries in the wilderness for the most part. The vast majority of the media/intertoobz swamp has reacted with a shrug to the LeBron/Bronny situation. This is because the vast majority recognizes LeBron James is LeBron James, and the rest of us are not. He's one of the two or three best players in the history of the game, and so has earned a special dispensation or two.

In other words: Let the man have his father/son moment. Who better deserves it?

Hard to say how many of those expressing that sentiment were thinking about shooting hoops with their own dads in the driveway. But it's not hard to guess.