KEVIN DING, OCREGISTER.COM
Q: What are the chances the competition for playing time between Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom causes some in-season strife?A: 76 percent.
Playing the role of hungry up-and-coming with serious personal goals and a career arc to begin bending, it’s Bynum. As the comfortable veteran confident that winning a championship one way is good reason to stay that way, here’s Odom.
You might have seen this story before with Kobe Bryant in the former role and Shaquille O’Neal in the latter.
Unless the Lakers roll through everybody with such dominance that it’s impossible for anyone on the team to complain about anything, the remake will probably feature a little tension, too. Bynum will again be bucking for more minutes, especially late. Odom isn’t the ego balloon that O’Neal is, but Odom’s recent comments serve as a signal that he doesn’t think the Lakers need to vary much from what worked last season.
There is obviously the threat of health issues with Bynum, but don’t think that Odom isn’t vulnerable to the injury bug, too. And it’ll be interesting to see how Odom deals if Bynum stays healthy and starts to be as productive as he should be. If those two things happen, Phil Jackson will have to work Bynum into his late-game fivesome more and more often.
If Bynum is healthy but still falling short of his personal goals, he will grumble about Jackson not using him or trusting him more; we’ve already seen that from previous seasons.
6 comments:
And to think it was a pre-season loss to Don Nelson that sent Lakerdom into this full-scale panic!
Andrew Bynum is terribly overrated. If Mitch Kupchak was half the GM that Jerry West or Bill Sharman, Bynum would be traded.
Was it Sharman that landed Kareem?
I'm not sure.
Good find! I'm waiting for Kobe to start with the I can't play here any more stuff and Artest to start whining about not getting enough touches and Kobe whining about Artest whining and Fish and Farmar fighting over minutes at the point. I'm looking forward to lots more articles about the Fakers being in disarray.
Should be entertaining.
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