Every Father-Son Duo LeBron James Has Played With or Against

LeBron James played his first NBA game on October 29, 2003, in Sacramento, and lost it 106-92. He had come to the league from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron and gone first overall in that June’s draft, one of the best known of the NBA players drafted straight from high school, and he scored 25 that night. Beside him for 39 minutes was Carlos Boozer. Across from him, playing 40 minutes for the Kings, was Peja Stojakovic. Both men had sons who would one day be draft prospects themselves, and Cameron Boozer went No. 3 to Memphis in June 2026, a few months too late for the list below.

Matching fathers and sons to a single opponent across two decades is harder than it looks. Scottie Pippen, one of the Hall of Famers who played alongside Michael Jordan, spent his last season in Chicago in 2003-04, played 23 games, and missed all four Bulls games against Cleveland, so his son’s appearances count for nothing here. Glen Rice played LeBron once in November 2003; his son, on Washington’s roster for five games against LeBron, never logged a second.

One pair did something else entirely. On October 22, 2024, LeBron and his son Bronny walked to the scorer’s table together with 4:00 left in the second quarter against Minnesota, the first father and son ever to play together in an official NBA game. They are LeBron’s own family, though, and this list is about everybody else’s: men who faced LeBron in the first two years of his career, and the sons who caught up with him later, in the order each pair was completed.

Glenn Robinson / Glenn Robinson III

The Cavaliers and the 76ers met four times in LeBron James’s rookie season, and Glenn Robinson managed to be on the floor with him for exactly one of them. In November he was inactive. In January he scored 20 points in Cleveland on a night LeBron sat out. In March he did not appear at all. That left December 19, 2003, in Philadelphia, when Robinson played 35:14, scored 18 and watched the rookie put up 36 in an 88-81 Cleveland win.

Robinson was Big Dog, a name a Purdue custodian hung on him before he had played a college game, and he entered the league as the No. 1 pick of 1994 on a 10-year, $68 million contract, then a record for a rookie. Philadelphia was the last stop where he could have run into LeBron. He finished with San Antonio the following spring, collecting a ring in a season in which he never once shared a floor with him.

His son made it look easy. Glenn Robinson III closed the pair on December 23, 2014, as a Minnesota rookie, playing 3:36 in a 125-104 loss in Cleveland, and faced LeBron 13 times in all, five of them in the playoffs with Indiana. Along the way he won the 2017 Slam Dunk Contest with a reverse jam over Paul George, the Pacers mascot and a cheerleader. The father never got a second night. The son got a perfect 50.

Rick Brunson / Jalen Brunson

Rick Brunson played 10 seconds in Game 3 of the 1999 NBA Finals, the only game the Knicks won in a 4-1 series loss to San Antonio. The same two franchises met in the Finals again in 2026, and this time a Brunson settled it: on June 13, 2026, Jalen scored 45 in a 94-90 Game 5 win in San Antonio, the Knicks took the title 4-1, and the Finals MVP’s father, one of the team’s assistant coaches, was there to see it.

Rick had been a journeyman in the most literal sense, with eight NBA franchises in nine seasons, plus spells in Australia, the CBA and the Philippines. One of the eight was Chicago, and on December 20, 2003, he played 18:11 against LeBron James in a 95-87 Bulls loss while the rookie scored 32. He met LeBron six times in all, the last of them as a Houston Rocket in 2006, and broke even at 3-3.

Jalen, a second-round pick out of Villanova, completed the pair on October 31, 2018, in his eighth NBA game, playing 11:07 for Dallas in a 114-113 loss that LeBron decided with a free throw. Through 2025-26 he faced him 15 times and won four, including a 39-point night in March 2025 that still ended in an overtime defeat. Against LeBron, then, the father has the better record. Against San Antonio in the Finals, the family has split two.

Gary Trent / Gary Trent Jr.

At Ohio University they called Gary Trent the Shaq of the MAC, which was fair to the conference if not quite to Shaq: a 6-8, 250-pound forward who was Mid-American Conference Player of the Year three times. He met LeBron James twice, both in the rookie season and both with Minnesota, and the Timberwolves won both. The first was November 21, 2003, in Cleveland, where Trent played 16:18 and scored 2 points in a 97-83 win.

The son found it much harder to get into the room. Gary Trent Jr. had four chances to complete the pair in 2018-19 and missed every one: inactive in October, unused on two November nights, and in April it was LeBron who sat out. He finally got on the floor with him on December 28, 2019, in Portland, for 8:43 and 3 points in a 128-120 Lakers win.

The proper meeting came the following August in the Florida bubble, where the Lakers beat Portland 4-1 in the first round. Game 5 was postponed when players refused to take the floor after the shooting of Jacob Blake, and when it was finally played, on August 29, 2020, Trent Jr. started in place of the injured Damian Lillard and scored 16 in 39:43. LeBron answered with 36 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists in a 131-122 Lakers win. The father had beaten LeBron every time he saw him. The son’s longest look at him that August ended Portland’s season.

Kenyon Martin / Kenyon Martin Jr.

Kenyon Martin went No. 1 in the 2000 draft. His son went No. 52 in 2020, and even then Houston had to buy him: Sacramento made the pick on November 18, 2020, and on November 25 sent Kenyon Martin Jr. to the Rockets for cash, reported by ESPN at $1 million, plus a future second-round pick.

The father was K-Mart, a 6-9 forward out of Cincinnati who made his NBA debut on October 31, 2000, against, of all teams, the Cleveland Cavaliers, while LeBron James was still in high school in Akron. He met LeBron himself 15 times, beginning on January 2, 2004, with 36:42 and 16 points in a 97-82 Nets win at the Meadowlands, and his teams won 9 of the 15. Kenyon Sr. played his last NBA game in February 2015. Junior did not arrive until January 2021, so the two never had a chance to face LeBron in the same season.

The son took the scenic route, skipping college for a postgraduate year at IMG Academy in Florida after he backed out of a commitment to Vanderbilt. His father defended the decision with a question: “who cares what is the popular choice?” The son completed the pair on January 10, 2021, in only his second NBA game, with 3:02, three missed shots and a 120-102 loss to the Lakers. He faced LeBron 10 times through 2025-26 and won twice. The No. 1 pick won nine. The draft, it turns out, knew roughly what it was doing.

Gary Payton / Gary Payton II

By Basketball-Reference’s count, Gary Payton II’s first game against LeBron James lasted 7 seconds, and that is the generous version. It came on opening night of the 2021-22 season, October 19, 2021, in a 121-114 Golden State win in Los Angeles, and ESPN’s box score gives him no minutes at all, just one missed shot. Either way, it counted, and it completed the pair.

His father had arrived at LeBron from the opposite direction, with time to spare. Gary Payton, the Glove, spent one season with the Lakers, 2003-04, starting all 82 games at 35, and that season put him among the Hall of Fame players who were Kobe Bryant’s teammates. On January 12, 2004, with Shaquille O’Neal not dressed, Payton played 42:50 against the rookie, well over twice Kobe’s 17:05, and the Lakers won 89-79. The 1995-96 Defensive Player of the Year shot 5-of-22 that night. LeBron shot 6-of-20. It was that kind of evening.

The son, undrafted and nicknamed the Mitten in his father’s honor, had been inactive for three earlier games against LeBron, with Milwaukee and the Lakers. After the 7 seconds he got rather more: all six games of the 2023 Western Conference semifinals, including a start in Game 4 with 15 points on 7-of-9 shooting. The Lakers won the series 4-2 anyway. The father’s first game against LeBron ran 42:50 and the son’s ran 7 seconds, which between them cover more or less everything a box score can say about playing time.

Samaki Walker / Jabari Walker

Before LeBron James had played an NBA game, Samaki Walker already owned a championship ring. He started the Lakers’ first five playoff games of 2002 and appeared in all four games of the Finals sweep of New Jersey, then signed with Miami the following summer and spent 2003-04 coming off the bench for 33 games. He had arrived in the league as the No. 9 pick of 1996 in a jacket and shirt that matched, plus a hat, an outfit CBS Sports later ranked the most ridiculous suit in NBA draft history.

Walker met LeBron on consecutive nights that April, playing 8:31 in a 106-91 Miami win on April 9, 2004, and 9:11 in a 91-80 Cleveland win the next night, scoring 2 points each time. He faced him five times in all and scored 6 points in total, which is a modest haul for a man with a ring.

His son Jabari went 57th in 2022, sat out Portland’s first three games of his rookie season, the last of them in Los Angeles against LeBron, and finally faced him on November 30, 2022: 14:29 and 2 points in a 128-109 Lakers win. Through the 2025-26 season he had faced LeBron four times and lost all four. “I credit a lot of my success to having an NBA father,” he told PhillyVoice in October 2025. The scoring, at least, runs in the right direction. The son had 25 points against LeBron in four games, the father 6 in five.

Adrian Griffin / AJ Griffin

LeBron James spent his 38th birthday in Atlanta scoring a season-high 47 points on 18-of-27 shooting in a 130-121 Lakers win on December 30, 2022. Across from him, a Hawks rookie named AJ Griffin played 24:30, made three 3-pointers and scored 13, and in doing so finished a pairing his father had started in Houston in 2004 in rather less time.

Adrian Griffin’s half of it came on February 25, 2004, in a 90-84 Rockets win, and by Basketball-Reference’s count it lasted 40 seconds: no shots, one rebound. He had gone undrafted in 1996 and worked his way up through Italy and the CBA, where he was the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1998-99 for the Connecticut Pride, before a nine-year NBA career that included the 2006 Finals with Dallas. Then he coached, for long enough to win a title as a Toronto assistant in 2019. The Milwaukee Bucks hired him as head coach on June 5, 2023, and fired him on January 23, 2024, with a 30-13 record, tied for the second-best in the league. It is not usually the sort of record that gets a coach fired.

The son played two NBA seasons, the second of them sparingly, and on September 29, 2024, at 21, announced that he was leaving basketball for full-time ministry. “I gave up basketball to follow Jesus,” he said. He shared three games with LeBron in all. Of the three, the first is the one LeBron is likeliest to remember.

Jabari Smith / Jabari Smith Jr.

During a timeout on January 16, 2023, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jabari Smith Jr. told LeBron James that he had played against his father in his very first NBA game. LeBron, Smith said afterward, “was kind of mad because he said I made him feel old.” It was also only half true. Jabari Smith Sr. was on the Sacramento roster for LeBron’s debut on October 29, 2003, but he never got off the bench.

The first game the father actually played against LeBron came on December 22, 2004, with New Jersey, and he made it count in his own fashion: 0-of-6 from the floor, 1 point, and the lob with 0.8 seconds left that Richard Jefferson finished for a 92-90 Nets win. “He winked at me,” Smith said of Jefferson, “and I knew he was going to go.” LeBron, who had 23, was called for two travels and a technical foul in the last 2 minutes.

The son’s first meeting, that MLK Day game in Los Angeles, belonged to LeBron, who scored a season-high 48 in a 140-132 Lakers win while Smith Jr. had 14 in 28:28. The rematch that mattered came in the 2026 playoffs, a six-game Lakers first-round win over Houston in which the son played every game. Watching the 2023 game from the arena, the father called it “Unbelievable. Best day ever.” He had, after all, now been in the building for both of LeBron’s introductions to the family.

Juwan Howard / Jett Howard

On Christmas Day 2003, in Orlando, Juwan Howard scored 19 points in 40:55 against a Cleveland rookie who had 34, and the Magic won 113-101 in overtime after outscoring the Cavaliers 16-4 in the extra period. Jett Howard, at the time, was 102 days old.

The father’s half of this pair is unlike any other on the list. Howard faced LeBron 12 times as an opponent, then signed with Miami in July 2010 on a one-year veteran-minimum deal and spent parts of the next three seasons on LeBron’s side of the floor. They shared 115 games, 103 of them as teammates, which is the most of any father here. Howard collected rings in 2012 and 2013. The first made him the first member of Michigan’s Fab Five to win an NBA title; the second came in a postseason in which he did not play a single minute.

Michigan hired him as head coach in May 2019 and let him go in March 2024, and in between he coached his son for a season in Ann Arbor. Jett went 11th in the 2023 draft to Orlando, sat out his first chance against LeBron on October 30, 2023, and then played 3:05 in a 120-101 Magic win on November 4, missing both his shots. It was not, in fairness, his first brush with the man. Earlier that year he had appeared in Shooting Stars, the LeBron James biopic, playing Carmelo Anthony.

Dale Davis / Trayce Jackson-Davis

The third game of LeBron James’s NBA career took him to Portland on November 1, 2003, where he shot 3-of-12 and scored 8 points in a 104-85 defeat. Dale Davis, a Trail Blazer that season, played 34:04, went 4-of-4 from the line and finished with 8 as well. It is the earliest any father on this list got his half done.

The son carries a hyphen that needs explaining. Trayce Jackson-Davis was born Trayce Davis and added Jackson for Ray Jackson, his mother’s husband, who raised him. “Ray raised me my whole life, so I did Jackson-Davis,” he said. Dale Davis is the second half of the name. A 57th pick out of Indiana, Trayce closed the pair on January 27, 2024, playing 5:51 for Golden State in a 145-144 double-overtime Lakers win in which LeBron had 36 points, 12 assists and a career-high 20 rebounds.

The father, meanwhile, had played LeBron with four different teams and finished with Detroit, where he shared four playoff games with him. He was on the floor for 7:57 of Game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Conference finals, the night LeBron scored 48 in double overtime, and for 5:39 of Game 6, which sent LeBron to his first NBA Finals. Basketball-Reference lists that clincher, on June 2, 2007, as the last game of Davis’s 16-season career. He went out, at least, with a very good view.

Jason Richardson / Jase Richardson

On February 14, 2026, at the Slam Dunk Contest in Inglewood, Jase Richardson went for a 360 off the side of the backboard, crashed to the floor, finished the dunk anyway and was eliminated in the first round. “My arm got caught on the side of the backboard,” he explained, which was evident to everyone watching. His father had won the same contest twice, in 2002 and 2003, as a Golden State Warrior.

Jason Richardson faced LeBron James 20 times between 2004 and 2012, the most games against him of any father on this list, for Golden State, Charlotte, Phoenix and Orlando. The first, on January 15, 2004, was a 119-102 Warriors win in which Richardson scored 25 to LeBron’s 29. The second, on April 3, 2004, in Cleveland, he scored 35 to LeBron’s 34 in a 103-100 Golden State win. His teams went 6-14 against LeBron overall.

Jase, the 25th pick of the 2025 draft, went to Orlando, the team his father had been playing for the last time he faced LeBron. He completed the pair on February 24, 2026, in Los Angeles, with 5:09 and no shot attempts in a 110-109 Magic win settled by a Wendell Carter Jr. putback with 6.7 seconds left. He did not play in the March rematch. The father had 20 games against LeBron to the son’s one through the 2025-26 season. In fairness, Jase had done his flying earlier that February.

Anthony Carter / Devin Carter

In the summer of 2003, Anthony Carter lost a $4.1 million player option with the Miami Heat because his agent, Bill Duffy, never told the team by the June 30 deadline that Carter wanted to exercise it. Carter, then 27, signed with San Antonio on July 30 for far less. Duffy, The New York Times reported in 2020, eventually paid him back on a payment schedule.

Carter’s half of this pair came on December 21, 2004, for Minnesota, in a 107-97 Cleveland win. Basketball-Reference puts him on the floor for 42 seconds, in which he recorded nothing at all except a plus-4. He faced LeBron 9 times in a 13-season career, never as a teammate, then went into coaching, which is how he came to be on the Memphis bench on January 3, 2025, when his son made his NBA debut for Sacramento against the Grizzlies. “I didn’t even look at him,” Devin Carter said. “Now he’s my enemy.”

Devin, the 13th pick of 2024, had spent the summer recovering from surgery on a torn labrum in his left shoulder. The Kings and Lakers met four times in 2025-26: LeBron was out with sciatica for the first, Devin was inactive for the second and unused in the third. Only on March 1, 2026, did both get on the floor, Devin playing 20:43 and scoring 6 in a 128-104 Lakers win. That made the Carters the twelfth pair. The father had needed 42 seconds. The son needed most of a season.