Top 10 Moments of 2008-2009: #8 - Lakers Get Bynum Back
 Moment #9: Ariza Steals the Ball! | Moment #7: Kobe Drops 61 in NYC |
Lakers Get Bynum Back | April 9, 2009
The Lakers heard it all summer, and they sure didn’t like it: “You’re soft.”
It started after – or perhaps during – a 4-2 loss to the Boston Celtics in the 2007-08 NBA Finals, including a blowout in Game 6. L.A.’s “finesse” game was largely blamed, and whether that assessment was accurate or not, it wasn’t going anywhere throughout the offseason and well into the 2008-09 regular season.
Yet on the other hand, the Lakers had an ace up their sleeve that they weren’t able to utilize against Boston, and it happened to be the seven-foot, 285-pound center Andrew Bynum, who’d gone out with a knee injury in January of 2007-08 and never made it back to the court.
It took Bynum until the next January to truly get into form, but his mere presence allowed Pau Gasol to slide to his more comfortable power forward position, affording both Gasol and Lamar Odom less pressure to battle the league’s biggest players. To their credit, Gasol and Odom picked up their respective individual games as well on the defensive end, but there was no denying that having not two but three elite big men made L.A. a whole different beast…
… Which is why it was so devastating when Bynum appeared to again put himself out for the season against the Memphis Grizzlies on Jan. 31, particularly because he had just found a dominating form that produced an average of 26.2 points, 13.8 boards and 3.2 blocks over the previous five games.
Things were to be different from 2007-08, however.
Bynum had only torn his MCL, and worked his way towards an April 9 return as L.A. faced Denver, allowing the 21-year-old four games to shape up for the playoffs. Phil Jackson played Bynum for 21 minutes on that night, and he produced 16 points and seven rebounds in an easy 116-102 Lakers victory that added confidence to the purple and gold spirit.
Bynum (expectedly) wasn’t able to return to his January form in the postseason, and he struggled to even get time on the court in certain games particularly in the first round against the smallish Utah Jazz, but he nonetheless gave the Lakers an element they simply didn’t have the previous season, and opponents didn’t have an answer. In particular, Bynum focused on defending the paint and rebounding, and he refused to allow easy baskets at L.A.’s rim even if he were forced to commit a foul. Since that was a practice that made opponents think twice about going to the hoop, Bynum gave the Lakers a boost before the game even started.
After all, nobody was calling L.A. soft when they won the title, and the role Bynum played after returning from injury is a seven-foot reason why.
| Moment #9: Ariza Steals the Ball! | Moment #7: Kobe Drops 61 in NYC |
