BRONNY JAMES HAS a lot on his shoulders. As the son of LeBron James, he’s not just under a lot of scrutiny as a player and a person. There’s also the weight of what happened in July 2023: During a USC summer practice, James went into cardiac arrest. An emergency response team rescued him with CPR and an AED before he was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
How is it that an 18-year-old fit guy had a heart emergency? It’s not unheard of; according to the Sports Institute at the University of Washington, the rate of cardiac arrest is about 2 in 100,000 young athletes a year. But it’s still shocking, partly because cardiac arrest comes on without warning. It happens when the heart, due to an arrhythmia, or abnormal type of beating, stops cold. This is different than what happens in a heart attack—that’s when a blood clot or ruptured bit of plaque blocks a coronary artery and prevents blood from flowing (a heart attack can also result in a cardiac arrest).
With a cardiac arrest, the first symptom is when a person collapses. In his cover interview with Men’s Health, James talks about his own experience and how the day felt totally normal until he blacked out halfway through running drills. He doesn’t remember anything else about it.
Incidents affecting young people are sometimes the result of a structural or electrical abnormality in the heart muscle, but not always. Even if they are, screening often doesn’t help surface them before a cardiac event (discover Men’s Health’s deeper dive on this here). In James’ case, he and his family learned after the incident that he had a congenital heart defect that’s being treated.
For people with underlying heart conditions, exercise can be a risk factor for cardiac arrest. It’s possible that dehydration, electrolyte imbalances, or stress hormones might also help bring on the arrhythmias at fault. At this point, however, doctors still don’t really know how the whole picture fits together.
When James was asked if he was concerned at that time about his ability to play again, he said, “At the point when it happened, there were a whole bunch of categories that what had happened could fall under, so yeah. There were a whole lot of emotions, but…”
He pauses a moment before talking about how he’s recovering. “I got real on top of my routines to get back to where I was. I had to do breathing exercises and stuff. It was a total reset. I have to stay on top of my heart medications, and…I got my heart pillow,” he told Men’s Health. “When I coughed, it used to hurt a little bit, but you get this pillow, and when you cough you just hold it so it doesn’t hurt.”
James was back playing less than six months after the heart incident. But it’s not completely in the past. “My days aren’t normal anymore,” he said. “I still feel like I’m getting back, I’m getting back to where I was.”
