Kareem attempts to get through to Andrew Bynum
Last week, news that Andrew Bynum had inked a deal for the rest of the season with Indiana surprised many fans who had him pencilled in as a Heatle, Clipper or even Knick after he was shown the door by Cleveland. Once arguably the top big man prospect in all of basketball, Bynum's fall from grace to a late-season minimum wage pickup has seemingly happened at warp speed. Injuries have played a significant part but his questionable attitude may be more to blame.
Larry Bird, Indiana's man at the controls and potentially the first man in history to solve basketball, has shown a propensity to take fliers on talented players with sketchy backgrounds in recent years and likely sees Bynum as another low-risk, high-reward investment. He also might be reminiscing about his glory days in the late 80's when the decade's power teams - Detroit, the Lakers and his Celtics - brought talented big men off the bench. James Edwards was a solid contributor for the Bad Boy Pistons during Bird's era and Bill Walton famously moonlighted as a 7'0" sixth-man-high-post-guru-point-center for the 1986 NBA Champion Celtics.
Kareem & Mychal Thompson
It's with the Showtime Lakers' Mychal Thompson Bynum may share the most in common. Thompson, father of Klay (one half of the world 3-point tag team champion Splash Brothers), was a former #1 pick and nightly 20-10 guy before settling in as Kareem's backup on 2 championship teams. Now, Baseline Leaner would never argue Roy Hibbert is on the same level as the greatest scorer of all-time, but the parallels are apparent: Thompson, a great player in his own right, accepted his role behind a more established All-Star for the benefit of the team. That's the challenge in front of Bynum should he want to add another chapter to his career which currently reads "Top Prospect," "All-Star," "Crazy Guy With Dumb Hair Who Can't Show His Face In 2 Cities"
The institution of a salary cap has made it difficult for teams to stash a top-tier big fella on their bench in recent years and the Pacers jumped at the rare opportunity to do so (much like Miami did with Greg Oden a few months earlier). Health permitting, it's over to Bynum to dictate how we remember his time in Indiana - will it be a tribute to the title-winning days of the giant 6th man or just another stop on his way out of the league for good?
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