I’ll say just one more thing about this topic. It’s very possible Bynum wasn’t working as hard as he his now, not because he was lazy or didn’t have drive, but didn’t realize the extremely high level of effort required. And his crash at the end of last year is what taught him, no one else, just learning from his experience. In support of that I’ll just remind of you two really great moments of the Bynum of yore. First, that great move and dunk on Shaq followed by some aggressive elbowing on the other end. That shows some chutzpah! As a 18 year old with no accomplishments to date, to basically say to one of the best players your team has ever had that won the team three championships, this is my house now. I mean, wow! Second incident was when Bynum called for the ball from Sasha and after Sasha didn’te give it to him he berated him. Both those incidents I think show Bynum has always had a certain amount of fire and drive. Maybe it just took a while for him to realize that it had to apply to his off-court preparation as well.

Alright, I’m done with this topic.

Anyway, easy to give meanings to otherwise insignificant things when your team is playing well. I could even claim that the injuries to Kwame and Luke did our team service in the long run as it could have jumpstarted Bynum and Trevor.

Interpolations and wild intepretations aside, I’m glad things worked out the way they did. This team looks immeasurably more promising than it did during the summer.

We all hear about players playing with a chip on their shoulder, about players having something to prove against their former coach/team/fans, and it’s not hard to imagine that those things are indeed helpful.

I’m not saying that Kobe had all of this in mind, nor that Kobe is responsible for Bynum’s growth – I’m only saying that Bynum probably (and thankfully) used it as fuel and worked on getting better. All credit is due to Andrew for using what was given, not to Kobe for inadverdantly providing motivation.

Bynum started his regiment long before Kobe’s inadvertant reality show moment and he heard criticism from a multitude of people, maybe you’ve heard of some them, little people like Phil Jackson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

Sure, it’s possible that Kobe’s comments put a fire under his ass, wait strike, it was probably more like a warm lightbulb, in any case, it probably gave him a little more motivation but does anyone really think there would be a noticable difference in his performance if Kobegate hadn’t happened? I mean, c’mon, seriously?

It was noted that Andrew had only played basketball for 5yrs (2+ in the NBA). Might that – and his age – not account for his “slower than we wished for” development?

The news nerds are still saying occasional things about Kobe’s trade request. Doesn’t that give any of you a clue that most of these people haven’t any idea what they are talking about?

This is a good team developing. This is a fun year. Still – I don’t really expect any championship in June.

http://my.lakers.com/blogs/2007/12/10/lakers-quarterly-report-1st-quarter/