Lakers will find out life without man in the middle

Perhaps this is a case of the basketball gods, unsure if the past three seasons had done the trick, pounding a little more humility into the Lakers.

Just when Andrew Bynum had arrived, everyone figuring that by the time the playoffs rolled around he'd be somewhere amongst Mikan, Wilt, Kareem and Shaq and plans would be made for another championship parade, this had to happen.

When Andrew Bynum collapsed in a heap last Sunday night against Memphis, you could feel the expectations leave the building. For those who couldn't feel it, the Grizzlies reminded them - they stopped shooting jumpers and started attacking the rim.

What had been a ho-hum affair against an overmatched opponent, the kind the Los Angeles Lakers had been reminding everyone that it used to be like this all the time, came down to the last shot.

For a team blessed with dead-eye shooters like Mike Miller and Pau Gasol, that shot turned out to be backup point guard Kyle Lowery driving right to the basket with only Kwame Brown between him and the winning points. Brown threw Lowery's shot back like it was a stranger's birthday cake.

Never mind that Brown threw down Lowry, too. As long as the referees swallowed their whistle, nobody seemed to mind.

The next night the Lakers needed overtime and 48points (on 44 shots) from Kobe Bryant to subdue bottom-feeding Seattle. Three days later, they were run out of Staples Center by Phoenix, whom they'd walloped twice before with Bynum in the middle.

So, where do they go from here?

The assumption is that there will be more of what happened against Seattle - Kobe Bryant trying to win games by himself. But everyone knows how that turned out last season. And the season before that. And the season before that.

In the past month, Kobe Bryant's trust in his teammates was readily apparent - not just because his scoring dipped, but the way he moved the ball, set up teammates and found other ways to help the Lakers win games, something they did 15 times in 18 games.

Now, they'll have to figure out something else.

"When you take a big piece out of your team - he's having a phenomenal year - it's a bit of an adjustment," the Suns' Steve Nash said of Andrew Bynum. "He's only been really playing with that team consistently for 2 months, so I think they know how life is without him. But they've gotten used to playing with him as well, so it will be an adjustment. (Bynum) is going to protect the basket and be a finisher around the rim and a post-up player, so they'll probably be less oriented in the post and a little more reliant on ball movement and perimeter shooting."

Nash knows about this all too well.

Two years ago, coming off a 62-win season, the Suns had to make do without Amare Stoudamire for nearly the entire season after knee surgery. They weren't the same team, but players like Boris Diaw and Leandro Barbosa emerged, and the Suns fought off the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers in seven games to reach the Western Conference finals.

"You've got Kobe Bryant," Suns coach Mike D'Antoni said after practice last week. "I'm not really worried about you guys, OK?"

Never mind who he thinks "you guys" are, that's only one way to look at it.

Across the hall, the Los Angeles Clippers' season has gone to pieces after Elton Brand blew out his Achilles tendon over the summer. Now, the only time Elton Brand breaks a sweat is on a treadmill.

Which might be a good image for the Lakers to keep in mind. Though the Lakers are a game behind the Suns for the best record in the West, ninth-place Utah is only four games behind them.

If they want their season to have some sort of promise for the day when Bynum returns, they might have to do more than run in place.

[More at www.dailynews.com]