Things haven’t been going well for Andrew Bynum since joining the Sixers. He has yet to make his debut for the team thanks to a bone bruise in his knee, and his timetable to return seems to be getting continually pushed back.
And then there was the bowling.
When star athletes struggle like this in a new city, even under legitimate circumstances like the original injury, local media tends to pile on. Philadelphia is no different, and might even be tougher on its athletes than most.
So with that in mind, we bring you this wonderful snippet from CBSPhilly.com, where SLAM Magazine’s Tzvi Twersky shared what he heard from one of Bynum’s former teammates.“I started investigating [the bowling] a little bit,” Twersky said. “And one of the people that I hit, a guy who has played with him before, he texted me back and said ‘I don’t know if that’s true [the bowling], but I do know that I’ve never met another player in the league who likes basketball less [than Bynum].”
“The disclaimer is, I don’t know Andrew like that. From what I hear, he’s a good guy,” Twersky said. “But the fact that I heard this from a guy who has played with him before, it kind of made me think, ‘what’s going on here exactly?’ That’s not the kind of a guy that I necessarily want to be maxing out.”
Welp.
Obviously, a player’s drive and motivation to perform on the court are extremely important factors in his success, and something that the fans look to as much as anything when trying to evaluate someone new to the organization.
The good news for Bynum is, all he has to do is play like he cares, and like the All-Star he was last season in Los Angeles for all the negativity to disappear. Just don’t expect that to happen until he actually makes his way back to the court -- a date which continues to be a question mark.