Los Angeles Lakers' Bronny James Responds to Fake Contract Report

The X account “NBA Centel” posted on Thursday a fake story about Bronny James, saying he had declined a three-year $45 million extension with the Lakers. Bronny replied to this report, saying “disrespectful.” James’s current contract with the Lakers is four-years worth $7.8 million.

The NBA Centel X account has become famous over few years for creating fake headlines to fool people into believing it. They play off of the reliable NBA news account “NBA Central,” by using the same logo and post formatting. The account names are very similar and each have a blue verified checkmark, making it very easy to confuse someone quickly glancing over a headline. 

If one gets fooled by a Centel post, it is called getting “Centel’d.” It doesn’t appear that Bronny did fall for this, but was just reacting to it instead. 

Bronny James Entering Year No. 2 in NBA

Bronny James is days away from getting his second season in the NBA underway. James confirmed earlier this offseason that he would participating with the Lakers summer league team starting in early July. 

Bronny played for the Lakers summer league team last July as well. Now with a full season of professional experience under his belt, the Lakers will hope to see that Bronny has taken a step forward in his development. 

The Lakers first summer league game will be on July 5 in the California Classic at Chase Center vs. the Golden State Warriors. 

Los Angeles Lakers 2025-2026 Outlook

The Los Angeles Lakers will once again have high expectations in 2025-2026. The Lakers are coming off a wild 2024-2025 season. JJ Redick took over as coach and helped propel them to the No. 3 seed in the Western conference. 

The craziest thing that happened to the Lakers and the NBA in general last season was the massive trade between the Lakers and Dallas Mavericks that sent Luka Doncic to Los Angeles for Anthony Davis. The Luka Doncic and LeBron James duo got bounced in the first round of the playoffs to the Minnesota Timberwolves, but now they have a full offseason to build around those two players. 

With LeBron James entering year 23 in the league, the clock is ticking to win now, although having Doncic does change things for the long term future.