LeBron's name game is a dad joke

No one will care about nepotism if Lakers father-son duo handles business like Griffeys, Howes

- DAVE FESCHUK

LeBron James says his son Bronny, drafted and signed by the Lakers, isn't allowed to call him "Dad" until they leave the practice facility.

It hasn’t happened often, a father playing alongside his son in a professional sport. But it has happened before. And when it has, it has raised an inevitable question from son to father: When we’re at work together, should I still call you Dad?

The question was posed when Ken Griffey Sr. played with Ken Griffey Jr. over two seasons with the Seattle Mariners in 1990 and 1991.

“He wondered whether he should call me Dad or Ken,” Griffey Sr. once said. “And I would tell him, ‘Dad’s a teammate. Do your job.’ He ended up calling me Dad anyway.”

And it was a topic, too, when Mark and Marty Howe played alongside their legendary father Gordie in the World Hockey Association in the 1970s. Harry Neale, who coached the Howes with the New England Whalers, once told a story of the familial on-ice dynamic.

“I remember one night in Quebec when Gordie got the puck on one side of the rink and Mark was just flying down the other side, right in front of our bench. I heard him yell ‘Dad! Dad!’ and there was the puck, right on his stick,” Neale remembered. “He took it in for the goal. It just made me tingle.”