LeBron James, Jr., at a youth basketball tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina, in July. Photograph by Jeff Siner / TNS via ZUMA

Basketball fans like to scour the Web for highlights of stars we already know. The pleasure of rewatching their most acrobatic feats is like the satisfaction of rereading passages from a favorite book. But, to me—and, presumably, to the half a million people who routinely watch each of his videos—LeBron James, Jr., offers something different. It’s not only that his story is unfinished, or even just beginning, but that it seems to have two authors at once, each with a legacy to define. There’s the boy himself, thirteen and already in possession of immense talents, and there’s his father, perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, who, at thirty-three, continues to play like he’s in his prime. Other sons of basketball stars have made the N.B.A., and a couple of them—Steph Curry, son of Dell; Kobe Bryant, son of Joe—have become superstars. But no one has so openly wrestled with his status as a hoops legend like LeBron James has. It was inevitable, when his son started playing, that the younger James would figure into the larger narrative. Watching him feels like the start of the next chapter.

Sports journalists and college scouts have been touting Jr. as his father’s son since before he reached middle school. Highlight reels circulated online with clips of a boy of average height, spindly but confident, heaving up a shot with two hands, or dunking on a mini-hoop in a suburban driveway. Glimpses like these were enough to prompt one newspaper headline to hail him, at twelve, as “a basketball clone of his dad.” Duke and Kentucky reportedly expressed interest in his future prospects. LeBron, Sr., sought to cool the hype at first, as any sensible father would. “Right now, all I care about is him having fun,” he said a few years ago. “He doesn’t need added pressure from his dad . . . . I’ll teach him when he gets old enough. I’ll wait till he gets thirteen, fourteen.” At that point, James said, he would share with his son what he called “the blueprint.”

Now that Jr. is old enough to access the master plan, the highlight videos are multiplying. The clips reveal a versatile guard, big for his age in both size and bearing, with an impressive handle and a smooth jumper. The echoes of his father’s game are hard to miss. LeBron, Jr., slashes to the basket, springing past defenders with crafty spins and beguiling hesitation moves. He shares the ball like his dad, with one-handed bounce passes whipped from great distances, crisp dishes, and creative finds in traffic. “He’s already a better passer than I was,” James has said.

If it’s odd to lavish so much attention on such a young kid, it’s also irresistible. When LeBron James was fourteen, he joined a local travel team and played at a tournament, in Orlando, that marked the start of his national ascension. “LeBron really separated himself,” his then-coach said, in the documentary “More Than a Game.” “You could see that he was the best player there.” By the time he was a junior in high school, he’d led his team to two state championships, and he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated. His high-school outings were relocated to a nearby college gym to accommodate the crowds, and ESPN broadcasted the games with a full assembly of analysts—from Bill Walton to Dick Vitale—like they were college showdowns between top-tier teams. “He’s the best high-school basketball player I’ve ever seen,” Jay Bilas said, courtside, at one game. LeBron’s precocity aged him in some ways, both flattering and otherwise; he entered the league as a mature player, then, before our eyes, graduated to superstardom undiminished by the fact that everyone saw it coming.

Are we watching his son too expectantly? Maybe, but a highlight reel from the John Lucas All-Star Weekend, posted this month, suggests not. It’s easy to forget, while watching the player here, that he’s only thirteen. His command on the floor is expressed with an air of total nonchalance—enough to make his father seem like a late bloomer. The same goes for a February video, shot at his school, where he’s seen laying the ball in with grown-up English and tossing shovel passes from half-court. The competition isn’t as stiff as in the other videos, where he plays with his travel team, but he hardly seems to break a sweat.

If he were older, his future might have begun to take some discernible shape, or at least to assume a more tangible trajectory. Zaire Wade, whose father is the former LeBron teammate Dwyane Wade, is a sophomore in high school, and is looking like a serious player; Shareef O’Neal, son of Shaq, will play for U.C.L.A. next season. Their playing careers are becoming their own; reality will soon temper our expectations, or vindicate them. LeBron, Jr., is young enough for his future to look limitless. And with his father still dominating, after fifteen years in the pros, an absence of limits seems like part of the family inheritance.

My favorite question to ponder, as I watch Jr. carve up helpless young defenders, is whether his father is sharing with him some singular fount of basketball wisdom. The James genes are clearly the key part of the “blueprint,” but there’s a deeper code that father and son may have to unlock together. To become a great player is hard enough, but for a son to do it on his own terms, undimmed by the legacy of his dad, is something else again. Maybe that explains the travel-team jersey number of the younger James: zero, worn in honor of Russell Westbrook, one of his father’s rivals.