9/11 TIMES A MILLION

So just when Andrew Bynum is looking like the next great big man in the NBA and the savior of the Kobe era in Los Angeles, he trips over goddamn Lamar goddamn Odom and messes up his kneecap. He's out eight friggin' weeks. The Lakers struggled to victory over crap-ass Seattle Tuesday night without him, and Phoenix's loss to the Clippers last night has left the Lakers--for now--with the best record in the West.

What could have been.

This team was playing great basketball, a legit championship contender, and Bynum was turning into a truly dominant player. The problem, as I see it, is that Bynum isn't a perennial 20-10 guy coming back from injury, where it's just a matter of time and health before he gets back to where he was. He was just starting to know what it's like to be a great player for the first time in his career, and now he's taken 10 steps back.

I've pretty much written the rest of the season off. Bynum isn't the most confident guy in the world to start with, and he'll be even shakier coming off injury. No way he'll be the dunking/rebounding/shotblocking machine he's been over the last month. He's thrived by being a phsyically dominant player, and I don't see a 20-year-old kid coming off a major knee injury jumping right back into the fray with full abandon.

Don't get me wrong, I think he'll be fine in the long term, I'm still very high on Big Andrew's (and the Lakers') future. But his body has never let him down before, and now he has to deal with that--I'm guessing it'll take some time to get back to where he was. I always thought it'd be 2009 at a minimum before the Lakers were contenders, Bynum's astonishing improvement over the last month ratcheted up expectations into the stratosphere--now I'm just pushing them back to where I had them before. 2009, baby. Lakers.

Now I'm going to go lie down and throw up.

NON-BYNUM NEWS

Boston is cooling off after a scorching hot start, dropping three of their last 4, including one to Charlotte and two consecutive to surprisingly not-awful (but not-great either) Washington. Boston averaged a paltry 83 points over the 4 games, showing that it's not just all about defense. There's no excuse for a team with 3 of the 20 best offensive players in the league to score 83 points. Now it's true Rajon Rondo has been hurting and they have almost no point guard depth (Damon Stoudamire anyone?), but still, this is Charlotte and Washington, not San Antonio and Detroit.

I personally don't think coaching counts for much in the NBA, but 0ne as bad as Doc Rivers might cost this team in the playoffs. The Pistons are now just 2.5 games behind Boston for best record in the league, with the Lakers another 2 games behind that.

Miami has lost 10 in a row to sink to 8-28. They need to go 33-13 the rest of the way to get to .500, which is around what it usually takes to get a #8 playoff spot in the crappier conference. That's not going to happen. This team has zero chance of making the playoffs. Right now I'd start playing for the Michael Beasley sweepstakes and pack it in for D-Wade at *any* sign of an injury setback. Fortunately for them, they might be bad enough to get the #1 pick even if Wade stays healthy (I expect Minnesota to show some improvement if and when Randy Foye gets on the court, they're in dire need of competent guard play).

But this is probably a blessing in disguise. They're capped out thanks to the horrific Shaq contract ($20M per over the next 2 years after this one), so the only way they're getting any better is (a) the draft, or (b) getting lucky with Dorrell Wright and/or Daequan Cook, the way the Lakers did with Andrew Bynum. But Wright & Cook aren't precociously gifted 7'1 300 pound centers. If Miami has any hope of retaining Dwyane Wade after he opts out in the summer of 2010, they need to have a serious talent upgrade, and being very, very sucky this year is probably the best way of accomplishing that. If they make some shortsighted trade for an aging, overpaid veteran with major question marks, a Ron Artest or Mike Bibby, I will smack myself in the forehead or chuckle. Possibly both.

New Orleans is 15-5 on the road. That's pretty crazy--only the Celtics are better in the entire NBA. The Hornets are 25-12 overall, half a game behind heavyweights San Antonio and Dallas. If I were doing an MVP ranking right now, Chris Paul is easily top 3. Over the last month, he's averaging 22 & 11.6, with just 2.2 turnovers--that's a 5.3:1 assist-to-turnover ratio. Nash's over that time is 3.3:1, Kidd's is 2.9:1. Amazing player.