So much for Carmelo, eh?
Something tells me that any Lakers fans who were pining for the ‘Melo express are now officially back on the Bynum bandwagon. And why not? Bynum may not be scoring points in bunches but he certainly deserves headlines.
The Lakers young center is averaging 11.5 boards and 3 blocks per game since the All-Star break but those numbers hardly begin to state the effect he’s having on the games. Midway through the Lakers blowout of the Spurs on Sunday ABC’s Jeff Van Gundy gushed that Bynum was dominating the game with his size and strength, despite the fact that he finished with only 4 points. And the thing is, JVG’s assessment was hardly an exaggeration.
The truth is Drew’s real impact comes in areas that are harder to measure. The quickness on his rotations, the second and third and fourth efforts on the glass. His contests of interior drives that result in altered shots but don’t get recorded as blocks.
Bynum has stopped just getting rebounds and is now finally becoming a rebounder. It’s a transformation, a metamorphisis if you will. From a Yao Ming to a Moses Malone. From a player who stands around and has missed shots fall to him to one who constantly pursues the basketball with max effort every time and eats up boards like they were Halloween candy on November 1st. In short, a beast.
So what’s gotten into Drew? Is it his health? Are the knees, and his confidence in them, finally back at 100%? Or is it something else, perhaps something not in his physical state but in his mental approach?
For the answer, I’m going to look to an unlikely source. And thy name is Bill Simmons.
Next: So What’s The Secret?
I have to admit, I kind of like Bill Simmons. Now, don’t get me wrong, the man is juvenile, nauseatingly self-referential and worst of all, a Celtics fan. But that doesn’t mean he’s not capable of entertaining me with an awards show podcast for Beverly Hills 90210 or have me in hysterics over some asinine comment one of his readers makes to his mailbag. And more to the point, it doesn’t preclude him from occasionally having some insight into the world of sports that he writes about.
In the first chapter of Simmon’s Book of Basketball he talks about something called ‘the secret.’ The secret as Simmons describes it is the notion that in order to win an NBA championship, players have be willing sacrifice every individualistic goal for sake of the team. Money, numbers, press clippings, all have to put it all aside. In short, they have to be able to overcome what Pat Riley termed “the disease of more.” To forgo stats for wins, placate playing time for chemistry.
Now it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to mention this except when I was watching Sunday’s Lakers-Spurs game something hit me. It was subtle, like a Charlie Sheen twitter post. But there it was. Andrew Bynum gets it. He understands the secret. It was a notion that was later confirmed when Bynum was giving his post game remarks.
“I realized where I could be a huge help, and that’s on the defensive end of the basketball,” Bynum said. “Try and get every rebound. Try and block every shot.”
Then the kicker.
“This team is going to win regardless if I get 15 points or if I get four points; that’s the kind of team we have,” Bynum said. “This team won’t win if we don’t have defensive toughness on the inside.”
Bam. Note for note, sound bite for sound bite, that’s exactly what you’d expect to hear from a player who is embracing the secret. And yet it’s only in the fact that his actions on the court are backing up that talk that I believe so completely that Bynum has finally turned the corner. Last year he showed grit in dragging his injured knee up and down the court during the finals. Now he’s made the transformation from padawan learner to jedi master, and it’s has nothing to do with his skill set and everything to do about how he is approaching his role on the team.
Next: Finding His Role
There were times earlier in his career when we would not have seen this Andrew Bynum. You’d watch Lakers games and see that he was so concerned about getting his shots that he’d rush to release the ball towards the rim as soon as he caught it on a post up, as if the ball itself were some sort of McGruber esque time bomb that was going to explode in the blink of an eye unless it was hurled safely through the net. This is a player who could be summed up by the phrase, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
But that was your father’s, or at the very least, your slightly older brother’s Andrew Bynum. This is a new Drew. And Association, you’ve officially been put on notice. The most recent version of Bynum doesn’t give a bleep about getting his shots up. He just wants to win. And that is ninth circle of hell bad news for the rest of the league.
With Drew finding his stride the Lakers are now a team that has their roles clearly defined and embraced. Kobe, the alpha dog scorer. Gasol, the trusted sidekick. Fisher, the veteran leader. Artest, the stopper. Odom the jack-of-all-trades off the bench. And now Bynum, the devastating enforcer and glass eater.
Perhaps this means that it’s not just Bynum, but rather the entire Lakers team that is coming under the influence of the secret. If that’s the case then you’ve been forewarned. Miami might not be the only team shedding tears in the locker room when this season is all said and done.