Early word: Eight weeks

8 weeks!! Can we live with Kwame at Center until early March? That kid needs to put velcro on his hands! Lamar needs to step it up.

So mid march.

If we can stay around the 5th seed, I will be happy.

I think I've only posted on this blog once before, but this situation prompted me to say something.
We need to sign Chris Webber now!!! He would definitely be an upgrade offensively over Kwame and would also help ensure we have a good player to fill in for Lamar if he gets hurt.

It sounded like Bynum would like to accelerate that timetable, so maybe 6 or 7 weeks instead?
I would still like us to pick up another big. My #1 choice would be PJ Brown but maybe there's a good trade out there somewhere.
The bad part is that we will probably not trade Kwame by the trading deadline, which is what I was hoping for. Maybe with more PT he will get back to how he played at the end of the '05-'06 season.

This is fckin painful! If you asked me if Bynum were out for eight weeks at the top of the season would it hurt the fan moral and the team productivity, I would have said you were crazy!! Unfortunately injuries are a part of the game of basketball and the fact that it isn't a microfracture situation is the silver lining in all of this!!!

It's time for Kwame to earn that 9 million!! He's got the body and the defensive skills to play the position. LO has got to get back to his near triple double ways (especially on the boards) and we can expect Kobe to be Kobe!!

This will be a test but I believe in this team!!!

Let's take it game by game and with that said.....let's go get those Sonic's tonight!!!

Lakers can continue to win and will win. Andrew will get well in time for us make a push down the stretch and in the playoffs. As a Laker fan, I will ride with whoever we have playing. I've said this all season and will stand by it. Everyone just needs to step up their game and get the job done and we'll be fine. Adversity will bring this team closer together and we'll get through this. Go Lakers!!!

CHRIST THATS MY INJURY!

Which is both a bad and good thing. Since Ive got experience I'll explain a bit to all you bloggers and to BK/AK

Basically because he bent his leg the opposite way, he outstretched the ligaments on the inner part of his knee. Technically, there are probably little tears, but they are so finite that its not considered a ligament tear..just sort of an overstretch, or what is a major sprain.

He said he felt pain on top of his knee and on the side, which is the same pain I felt, because what happend was that his knee move out of its socket enough so that it rubbed some cartlidge and so that part of the knee went through a bit of trama. Some scar tissue will develop in the back of the knee, because it becomes hard to bend.

The reason he clutched his knee was the same reason I clutched my knee when I was 15. He got really scared because he lost all power in the knee. Think about it. If the knee cap moves, the whole strength of the knee is gone so it feels like its broken or you tore it off. But the only thing that happened was that the one place where all the force is focused on went away. He freaked out because he THOUGHT that it was worse than at firs tthough. His knee probably didnt POP, but he DID feel a shift.

THe way you rehab is not surgery (especially since hes so young) but just strengthening the muscles around your knee, mostly your quad and then the very top of the knee. Lots of leg press, excercise bike and stair master, tip toe raises, that sort of thing. Stand on a medicine ball eventually to gain confidence in the lateral movement.

When i had that injury when I was 15 it took my 12-16 weeks before I regained my top form. But then I rehabed, and eventually I was 4 times the player I was ever before. It became the point that I didnt even wear a brace, didnt even remember that I had a hurt knee.

Now the downside to the injury is that there is a likelihood of it happening again, because those ligments will always be more stretched. But the silver lining is that if you keep strong muscles, youll be find barring another major injury. For example, 4 years later I re-injured my knee the same way, coming down on somebody's ankle for a rebound and i felt my knee go on me. But because i had strengthened my knee before, I was walking in a couple of days, running in 3 weeks, and now Im fine again.

Now of course Im not a NBA player, so I dont have the physical training. Luckly for Bynum, he did an intense workout this summer. If this happened last year, I would have been worried. But now hes already got the muscles to help. He just has to stay on top of it as soon as today, so taht scar tissue doesnt develop and he doesnt lose those muscles.

The worst part of the injury (my doctor told me) was the mental aspect, of thinking that the knee cap might go on him again. But hopefully whoever is around him doesnt talk about it, or remind him of how it felt. But he sounds really good to me about his attitude, so Im confident.

I say depending on severity give him 2-3 months before we see andrew back on the court, and come playoff time he should be back to 95-96% in terms of the mental aspect.

I hope that was helfpul to you all.

If we can play .500 ball during the 8 weeks that Bynum is out we should count ourselves lucky.

Well boys, the streak now is in trouble.

It was fun while is lasted.

Looks like the basketball gods are still frowning upon us

Just when things were getting good.

It's been a pleasure.

Let me whip out my violin to play with the sinking ship..........

BK,

The bruise of the knee comes from the kneecap moving out of place and rubbing with the bone. As a matter of fact, I still get mysterious bruises around me knee after I play a hard game of basketball. It's one of those it hurts if you press but nothing severe. Dont even ice it. Although when he gets older itll hurt, but since im only two years older than bynum, ill keep you guys posted when it becomes a chronic injury hahahaha.

The answer is to shore up our perimeter defenses if we don't have big men capable of patrolling the lane (Kwame is only a decent one-on-one positional defender). Ariza might have to get more playing time. It would be nice to see him chasing point guards much the way Pippen used to lock em down. But Luke in with no Bynum? I don't want to see how that turns out.

I'm no doctor or anything, but wouldn't you be able to see a dislocated kneecap in an x-ray?

I guess it doesn't really make a difference. Let's just be thankful that he doesn't need surgery and he will be back this season.

GO LAKERS!!
Make it 7 in a row tonight!!

oh my goodness. backlash of last year!?! weren't the LAKERS 26-13 last year when the injury bugs hit them? well similiar record this year but man oh man hopefully KOBE can pull us through. If he does, MVP this year no? Media keeps bashing the poor guy. L.O needs to step up now! this guy needs to deserve the close-to-kobe money he is making.

if L.O can avg at least 19 points and continue his strong rebounding, then we would be fine. I have strong faith in FISH, LUKE, ARIZA, FARMAR, TURIAF, RADMAN(when he gets back) SASHA to pull us through this 2 month period. Notice how i didnt put KWAME? i've lost faith in this guy. what a bust

Even with Bynum down, there are a lot of things about this team that are
improvements over last season. There's Fisher instead of Smush, there's
Ariza instead of Evans, and there's improvements by Farmar, Vujacic, and
Radmanovic. If the Lakers can avoid any more injuries, and if they can get
Vlad and Sasha back, I think they'll be able to weather through this. They
won't stay in the top 4, but they will stay in the playoff hunt.

I'd predict if Bynum misses 30 games, the Lakers will go 18-12.

And if Bynum can get back up to full speed by the playoffs, then there'll
be a top seed in the West that will be sweating bullets.

Please, please, Cap. Step up and offer to tutor Kwame one-on-one. No one has taken the time to develop Kwame like you've developed the Drewski.

The Lakers need a calm, cool, & collected Kwame.

Like I said in the last thread, this is bittersweet. On the one hand, there's no ligament damage which is a good thing. On the other hand, the 8-week time table is pretty long. I don't think we can keep up our current pace without Andrew, but we've definitely got enough talent and enough players that know the system to play 55% ball over that two month stretch.

We've played well without Bynum playing or playing huge minutes. Like that 11-3 run we ended the 05-05 season on. And we had a strong start this season with Bynum playing about 24 minutes to start the season and we got off to a 6-2 start.

#4,

Nope. Magloire is playing (badly) for the Nets.

Didn't that bonehead Mike T wish for an injury to Bynum so that he could justify his love of Kwame????

Better be careful what you wish for. Here we go. We have a chance, but not a very good one.

But I'm a true fan will continue to root and watch even if the wheels come off.

LAKERS!

What irony, Lakers hit No. 1 in the Power Rankings the same day they lose Bynum for two months. You couldn't make this stuff if you tried.
billy

Repost from other thread:

The rest of January is a very tough schedule as has been noted (Phoenix, SA,
Dallas, Cleveland, Detroit) with a couple of "easy" ones thrown in (Seattle, NY).

I'm hoping they'll win 2 out of 5 of the hard ones and they should win the two
easy ones.

February looks brighter, even though most of it is on the road, since we'll be
playing mostly Leastern Conference teams, but then it gets tough again as we
start playing more Western Conference teams.

I'm optimistic, but 55 wins is definitely in jeopardy.

Posted by: Bzar | January 14, 2008 at 01:48 PM

I've been dying to see this version of the Lakers play all the tough Western Conference teams during the upcoming stretch, but this is not what I was dying for. Yikes, this is scary. At least the early news is as favorable as could be expected, but that feeling of dread I had before last night's game is haunting me. I hope he heals quickly and makes a sooner than expected return, or at least, he comes back ready to go for the playoffs.

oh boy, do NOT rush him back. The stairmaster is the DEVIL because you can be overworking your achilles and calf areas and not feel a thing until hours after the workout and then you can enjoy the sheer pleasure of plantar fasciitis until you calm down the calf again... in other words, add a week of sitting around doing nothing but massaging it...

Kwame Brown, it's your big chance! Your contract is up and you are now on display for the entire league. Don't think about it... LOL!

The Lake Show, thanks for your helpful info and insight, it's appreciated.

eh....theres always next year

Don't mean to be a pessimist but its hella hard trying to be optimistic now. Without Andrew in the middle this team becomes a whole lot easier to defend. We must be cursed. At the same point last year the injury hit us when we were doing so well. I know, it could have been worse, and im glad that bynum is expected to make a full recovery without any surgury. He's still young it may take less time than what is expected. But the point is this will change the way the lakers operate and come the time when bynum comes back will they be able to find the same rythym? i doubt it. Kobe will most likely be kobe again, lamar will hide away while kwame attempts to reach his career long goal of breaking backboard with a hook shot. This team might ban together and realize they have to fight harder than ever, we have the talent and are deep enough to pull through. However, theres more excuses than motivation at this point.

At least this news should make Mike T real happy...

This could definitely have been worse, but it isn't fortunate to lose him during the hardest stretch of the season starting later this week. The messed up thing is this conference is so tight that going .500 for the next month could drop us out of the playoffs. BUT I don't think Bynum is the only reason we've improved this year. If we can get our bench back to full strength we;re still a good team. Despite Kwame being a human Maalox commercial, this time could improve his confidence and give us a more solid rotation at center when Bynum gets back.