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Bynum is a role player but his role is a very important one when it comes to LA's defense. Defense wins championships.
I agree w/ Cubster.
Bynum isnt good enough to use as an excuse if the Lakers don't win this series.
Guys just a role player IMHO
Bynum is a role player but his role is a very important one when it comes to LA's defense. Defense wins championships.
Bynum is definitely a role player, but like hitman said, his role is extremely important..
It's not even just the fact that Bynum is an above average/good defender, it's not even really Bynum as an individual..it's the fact that the Lakers ADD him next to ANOTHER 7-footer, it's obviously their main advantage as a team, even bigger than Kobe, as everybody has obviously noticed over the last 2 years..
There are no excusesPERIOD.
If we fail to end the Celtics, if we lose this there is nothing we can do cept take it like a trooper with nary an excuse.
Odds at this point for our chances? 40/60. But, I can't be trusted with opine when it comes to the Lakers OR Suns. I'm too vested, too ed up mentally.
I dunno about 40/60.. Im inclined to give Lakers an edge since its best of 3, with 2 in LA.
You can't rattle Boston, therefore you must earn each point each game. That's difficult to do over the course of a long series.
We'll give away: (Walton taking a possession off///Pierce lights him,,,Kobe taking a possession off///Allen lights him.
You can't give anything away in these types series. Orlando? , I'd give my right nut to be tipping in Florida tomorrow evening. They'll follow you down the primrose like shaved pussy.
Tip it///Leave it///Finish it
once again, just more proof of how overrated Bryant is
needs a stacked team, that has considerable size advantages, personnel advantages, matchup advantages, to win anything.
Wade and your team ain't ever beat anybody of merit, Heat. The Mavs folded up like a cheap tent in '06. You've been in the ever since.
There is nothing about the Lakers franchise that Ghazi can talk about, so I wouldn't be so worried about what he posts.
Bynum not letting Lakers fall to one knee
By Kevin Ding
The Orange County Register
We wanted the rivalry renewed.
We waited all season for the Lakers to grow impassioned about playing.
We wondered what strength of heart truly beat inside Andrew Bynum’s fragile body.
He says he’s ready to show us something.
With Bill Russell’s size and Magic Johnson’s easy smile, born the year the Lakers last won a championship over the Celtics in 1987, Bynum is all lit up as he looks forward to “for sure” the biggest game of his life.
Bynum got his injured right knee drained in the hours after the Lakers lost and looked lost with him unable to play even two minutes in the second half of Game 4 of the NBA Finals. He said it’s “guaranteed” the knee will balloon with fluid trying to protect the torn cartilage in there after he plays the tie-breaking Game 5 Sunday night.
“It’s a must-win, I think, honestly,” Bynum said. “Because not only does it give us the advantage in going back home and having two games to finish the job, I think this (Celtics) team doesn’t really want to go to L.A. down. So that’s something mentally for them that they don’t want to happen.
“It’s just a really, really, really big game, and I’m going to be ready for it. I got it drained; I’m ready to go. Take pain-killers, and go at it.”
Bynum is not far off in his assessment: A road team has faced a tie-breaking Game 5 with the safety net of home Games 6 and 7 eight previous times. The Game 5 winner has won seven of those eight series, the lone exception being the 1994 Houston Rockets.
So every time the road team has won the tie-breaking Game 5 the Lakers are trying to claim now, it has won the le.
“We’re in the driver’s seat in this series,” Bynum said.
Bynum does not, however, plan to stay seated and get wheeled dramatically out onto the parquet floor for tip-off, even though we all know there’s a wheelchair somewhere in the arena from Paul Pierce’s safety-first ride in the 2008 NBA Finals.
Bynum is not exactly pulling a Willis Reed here, either. He has been unquestionably professional in fighting off sharp pains and properly medicating. (Shaquille O’Neal wouldn’t even take pain-killers for stretches of his career because they upset his stomach.) Bynum has treated the knee diligently with every known medical advancement and maintained unwavering determination to play every game since his April 30 injury.
But a torn meniscus is not going to affect Bynum long-term, nothing close to the two serious knee injuries he has had the past two years. The rehab for this surgery early next month could be as little as two weeks. Bynum has been assured by his personal physician, New York Mets team doctor David Altchek, that nothing worse can happen and no danger lurks in draining the knee.
Bynum actually doesn’t like needles, which was one reason he didn’t drain the knee midway through the second round of the playoffs. But this being his second drainage in 12 days, he shrugs now.
“Stick it in and take it, that’s kind of the procedure,” he said.
Once he was told he’d have to get it drained to keep playing this time, he signed up immediately. He avoids doing much on his leg after all the fluid cushioning the joint is extracted. After about five hours, enough new fluid is generated to make the knee work again.
Hopefully for Bynum, there won’t be so much fluid collected in there again by 5 p.m. Sunday that his tendons and muscles won’t fire, as was the case last game. He’ll need mobility to navigate the pick-and-rolls that Boston’s Kendrick Perkins and Nate Robinson both said the Celtics will be bringing to attack Bynum’s knee.
It’s not that Bynum is doing anything superhuman. It’s just that he’s determined to be the best human he can. And that’s because – to use his default lingo – he really, really, really wants to win.
“This one will feel great for me, if we win this, honestly, just ‘cause I’ll know what I went through to get it and really just went out and fought through the pain, fought through the injury and got it accomplished,” Bynum said. “And it’s the Celtics, and they beat us (while Bynum sat out in ‘08), so it’s revenge.”
It just goes to show you that no one is born a Marine. The youngest player ever drafted into the NBA at age 17 – hence his uniform number – Bynum wasn’t automatically inclined to do any extra push-ups or fight through any pain. He was automatically inclined to forage the hotel-room mini-bar or swing through the McDonald’s drive-thru.
Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak summed up the distance traveled these past five years with a single word: “maturity.”
Team co-captain Derek Fisher said of Bynum: “He’s made the ultimate sacrifice and tried to pay the ultimate price. As a professional basketball player, your commodity is your body. So for him to take the steps that he’s taking to try and help us win, I think that says a lot about who he is and what his purpose is with our team.”
Ideally for the Lakers, Bynum will face in-house compe ion to be the bounce-back hero of Game 5.
No word on whether the Lakers injected the removed fluid from Bynum into Lamar Odom get him lubed up to compete, but Odom on Saturday finally said all the right things – with actual feeling – about needing to play better. Ron Artest is fired up after his productive private conference with Phil Jackson. Even Kobe Bryant is eager to execute better against Boston’s fourth-quarter defense that sends three players his way.
Regardless of whether Bynum plays poorly, though, he will be a success if the Lakers are a success.
When asked if he has changed a lot of opinions about his toughness, the injury-prone Bynum smiled and said: “More so if we win. People will appreciate it more. If not, it’s obviously going to be the same story.”
Boston reserve Glen Davis was actually thinking the exact same thing: He still needs more to make his drooling “Big Baby” face a part of Boston sports history and become toasted forever at New England parties where tails will never cease being raised for Ted Williams, Bobby Orr, Larry Bird and Tom Brady – but also Bernie Carbo.
Davis went from breaking his hand in a fight in a car with his best friend two days before the season opener to stealing the show in Game 4 of the NBA Finals.
“People will remember it if we win it,” Davis said. “People won’t remember it if we lose.”
That’s because legends are not losers.
Give Bynum his due respect for now. The glory must wait.
That's exactly what he's going to do to Boston tonight.
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