LOS ANGELES — The idea materialized for LeBron James three or four years ago, his body still in mint condition despite the mileage, his son a few years away from a future that seemed impossible to create.

Bronny James was just getting his bearings at Sierra Canyon High back then. But he was beginning to turn heads in front of sold-out nationwide crowds, and holding his own in the rotation of a nationally renowned program ripe with NBA prospects. And suddenly, it seemed possible James’ NBA timeline, then in his mid-30s, could intersect with his son’s after Bronny played a year or two of college basketball, James’ longtime friend Romeo Travis recalled.

“I think that was the time he started to realize, like, ‘This could become a reality,’ ” said Travis, a former member of the St. Vincent-St. Mary “Fab Five” in Akron, Ohio.

James, fellow childhood friend Dru Joyce III emphasized, is a sports historian. And he has long remembered the moment, Joyce III said, when Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr. trotted out to the outfield together as Seattle Mariners in 1990, the first father-son duo to hit in the same MLB lineup.

“That says something,” said Joyce III, also a former St. Vincent-St. Mary teammate and now the head coach at Duquesne. “That’s always stuck out to him that, ‘Hey, man, this may be an opportunity, and that’d be pretty cool.’ ”

Over time, that opportunity has transformed from oft-dismissed fantasy — take James’ August 2022 sit-down with Sports Illustrated — into a sheer inevitability, Bronny tied to the Lakers at nearly every step of his pre-draft process after he declared in April. On Thursday afternoon, the young James was officially taken with the 55th pick in the NBA draft, a move that could ensure perhaps the greatest player of all time will take the floor with his son in a feat unlike anything seen before in basketball history.

“For him to be able to even change his whole family’s dynamic — the whole dynamic of his family, the trajectory of the James name for generations to come — is something simply amazing,” Travis said.

It’s a final, shining piece in James’ legacy, a kid from Akron, Ohio, growing up with no father figure who has grown into a model father himself, laying a future for his children in the league he’s forever molded.

In four years at Sierra Canyon, Bronny’s potential was most often debated under a toxic storm of discourse around his status as James’ son. In a trying year at USC, his potential was most often debated under a toxic storm of discourse around basketball nepotism and James’ next contract.

“My dream has always just been to, put my name out, make a name for myself, and of course, get to the NBA,” James told reporters at the NBA combine in May, the longest media session of his young life.

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