Andrew Bynum, Lakers Play the Waiting Game

The team is struggling without his services, but the Lakers refuse to rush Bynum back into action prior to the Playoffs. Probably a wise move. The Press-Enterprise reports: “Hopes seem to be fading that the Lakers will have Andrew Bynum back before the end of the regular season. ‘I’m just not holding my breath as to a timetable,’ Coach Phil Jackson said Tuesday, a day after Bynum had an MRI on his strained left Achilles’ tendon that Jackson described as ‘inconclusive as far as any major injury or anything going on.’ Bynum’s return, Jackson said, ‘is going to take some time and we don’t know when. Obviously, we’d like to have him play a couple of games at the end of the season, but (Tuesday) morning I told him, if that’s not possible, we’ll take whatever we get in the playoffs.’ The center’s recovery is a matter of rehabilitation and regaining fitness, but ‘there’s discomfort after a certain amount of exercise. He can start getting off his toes and it will start (to hurt).’ Lamar Odom, for one, doesn’t want to see Bynum rush back. ‘We want him to be healthy,’ Odom said. ‘Hopefully that’s when he’ll come back, when he’s 100 percent. We don’t want him to get out there and go down again.”‘