When reports surfaced explaining the reason that Andrew Bynum was kicked out of a Cavaliers practice before ultimately being suspended and traded from the team, we obviously assumed the worst.
As it turns out, our assumption that Bynum was being so blatantly disrespectful that he would dare to launch shots well out of his normal range weren’t that far off -- and it’s something he admitted to in a recent interview discussing the Cleveland situation.
From Candace Buckner of IndyStar.com:He did not work well under coach Mike Brown’s detail-oriented structure. “It’s kinda like, if I send you to the grocery store and I give you three choices for peanut butter, you’ll probably pick one easily. But if I give you 25 choices, you might stand there for half an hour. Having it be too detailed may not always be the right thing,” Bynum says.
Also, Bynum raged against the shoot-first guards. During a practice, Bynum said that he launched a shot from midcourt, clearly out of the rhythm of the offensive play. Another day during a scrimmage, he did not like a call from assistant coach Phil Handy and mocked him as “a horrible referee.”
“Those are the two things I did,” Bynum says. “I did them on purpose because it was over there for me.”
Bynum said all the right things in regards to his new situation with the Pacers, the team with the best record in the East and the one with the best chance of upsetting the defending champion Heat in a postseason series.
It’s possible Bynum may have been spoiled a bit by his time with the Lakers, and isn’t equipped (or even willing) to deal with being on a team that isn’t in a prohibitive winning situation. But the chance in Indiana will certainly be his last if it goes awry, and we’re all still waiting to see exactly what he can contribute at this stage of his career on a consistent basis.
