James' positive attitude has Trojans optimistic

>> Just fifteen minutes after Bronny James collapsed on the floor of the Galen Center practice courts, his teammates heard, he was up and cracking jokes.

The hysteria of headlines that swarmed, after news broke two months ago that perhaps the most famous teenager in the world had suffered cardiac arrest at a USC practice, was felt in that bubble that Monday night at the Galen Center. They were playing five-on-five, and then it just happened, senior guard Boogie Ellis said; and the reaction was simple confusion, senior transfer DJ Rodman said.

What just happened? And yet for all the panic, for all the trauma of a horrifying medical calamity that teammates had seen befall a second USC player within the span of a year, James’ overwhelmingly positive nature has helped this team move forward, Ellis and Rodman said on Monday. Stripped away behind the heft of his family name and the legion of cameras that tracked his every high school move, Rodman — son of an NBA legend himself — had come to know James as a fairly quiet, goofy kid without ego.

Knowing James is in recovery — the team visiting the freshman at the hospital the very next day and, now, hearing him quip in a Snapchat group chat — has helped USC “sleep at night,” Ellis said Monday.

“He popped up when he did, and it was just that,” Rodman recalled of the night of James’ heart attack. “It was just, Bronny. It was just who he is.”

“It was like it never happened.”

James wasn’t at USC men’s basketball’s first official practice of the year Monday, and coach Andy Enfield said he couldn’t comment on any medical specifics. But after a promising update last month from a James family spokesperson — establishing his heart attack as likely caused by a congenital heart defect and expressing confidence he’d return to play soon — optimism abounded Monday as to James’ prospects his freshman year with the Trojans.

“I’m really looking forward to playing with him this year,” Rodman said of James. “That’s one of the main things I want to experience, is just playing with him.”

Coming out of an up-anddown but highlight-filled high school career at Sierra Canyon, his USC teammates only got a small on-court glimpse of James; the freshman didn’t accompany the Trojans on a preseason Europe tour, and is “around when he can be,” Enfield said. But the same easygoing attitude that’s helped teammates move on from the trauma of that night — “no choice but to move forward,” as Rodman put it — has already endeared James to veteran members of this USC program. Chief among them Enfield.

“He’s the ultimate teammate, because he cares about winning ... watch him on the court, and you’re around him, that’s the first thing you notice, within 5 or 10 minutes,” Enfield said Monday. “And it’s contagious.”

“We’ll miss that here, until he gets back,” Enfield continued.

If James is able to make a full recovery and contribute his freshman year, he’ll add another ballhandler to a USC team already brimming with playmakers.