Indiana Pacers/Mad Ants forward Kyle Mangas, who re-signed with the Pacers Earlier this week he played his summer basketball league with Bronny James and the Los Angeles Lakers in July.
The Indiana native played just one game before injuring his ankle, recording six points and three rebounds in his lone outing. The 25-year-old returned to the NBA spotlight last season after a few years overseas.
“[It] It was still a really cool experience, you know. Training in front of LeBron. [James] and just things like that,” Mangas said on the Pacers locked podcast to play for the Lakers. “Meeting JJ Redick, Rob Pelinka, all those guys. [It was] “Very cool.”
Last year, Mangas played primarily for the Indiana Mad Ants. He played 51 games for the club, the G League affiliate of the Indiana Pacers, and averaged 16.9 points per game. It was his first season back in the United States after playing in the Czech Republic and Lithuania.
Instead of joining Indiana for Summer League, Mangas opted to join the Lakers, who had Bronny James on their roster. The young guard, who is the son of NBA legend LeBron James, has received a lot of attention since being drafted in late June. including comments from the Pacers coach Rick Carlisle.
Mangas felt the younger James handled the attention well. The two have only played together once, and they lost to the Sacramento Kings. Bronny James had four points, two rebounds and two assists in that outing.
“He’s a super nice guy, he’s calm, he’s pretty laid back. He’s a hard worker,” Mangas said of the 19-year-old. during the podcast appearanceThey overlapped on the court for just over three minutes in their only appearance together, and the Lakers lost that period by two points.
“There’s so much media around him. We’d get off the bus at our hotel and there’d be 250 people waiting to film him and get into the hotel,” Mangas recalls of his experience as Bronny’s teammate. “You have to empathize with a kid like him, there’s a lot of pressure and publicity, and it’s hard to escape sometimes.” [I] I think he did pretty well from what I saw.
The Lakers’ first Summer League game in Las Vegas was against the Houston Rockets, and the arena was packed to the rafters to watch James and his teammates take to the court. The Rockets also had some young players full of intrigue. Mangas remembers walking onto the court thinking the atmosphere was remarkable and electric.
The Indiana native didn’t play that night because of his ankle injury. “For a summer league game, it was on fire,” Mangas recalled. The Rockets beat the Lakers by 19 points, and Bronny James finished with eight points and five rebounds.
The full podcast interview with Mangas can be found here.
