Lakers Getting Ready for Bynum’s Baby Steps

Andrew Bynum stepped to the dais and took his first prodigal step as a Laker, posing with jersey No. 17, which just happens to be half of No. 34.

The youngest player drafted in league history smiled and joked and seemed more at ease than most teenagers, paying reverence to the Laker “program,” referring to its general manager as “Mr. Kupchak” and admitting with a grin that he stammered a bit when Kobe Bryant called him earlier Thursday.

“I’m Andrew Bynum, just been drafted by the Lakers,” he began as he sat down at a news conference, revealing shortly thereafter that he had selected his jersey number to remind fans and foes alike of the age at which he was drafted. (Rick Fox, the last Laker to wear No. 17, obligingly let the number go, Mitch Kupchak said.)

There were other revelations: He had slimmed down to 270 pounds and had a strong feeling he would be drafted by the Lakers on Tuesday night after they had guaranteed they would take him ... if he was still available with the 10th pick.

He was, and the Lakers followed through, and Bynum and his family will be moving to L.A. from Metuchen, N.J.

But before their arrival, two questions had already preceded them: How much can be expected from Bynum and how soon?

The pattern for big men is obvious, dating to Moses Malone, the first player to go from high school directly to pro basketball: struggle the first few years and then maybe, just possibly, start taking off from there.

Malone, taken by the Utah Stars out of Petersburg (Va.) High in the third round of the 1974 American Basketball Assn. draft, spent two seasons in the ABA and another two in the NBA before breaking out in his fifth pro season, averaging 24.8 points and a league-high 17.6 rebounds for the Houston Rockets.

He led the league in rebounding five more times and his run through the 1982-83 playoffs with the Philadelphia 76ers is still thought of as one of the more impressive one-man displays in postseason history.

A year after Malone made the jump to the ABA, Darryl Dawkins was the first to go to the NBA from high school, graduating from Orlando (Fla.) Maynard Evans High in 1975 and getting drafted fifth overall by the 76ers.

He averaged only 4.2 points over his first two seasons but improved from there, quickly becoming a curiosity piece, if not fan favorite, with his backboard-shattering dunks, his self-created “Chocolate Thunder” nickname and his claim to be from the planet “Lovetron.” He averaged 12 points and 6.1 rebounds over a 14-year career that ended in 1989.

A pioneer of sorts, Dawkins remembers the old days, when doubters made current-day critics seem civil.

“At the time I came in there were so many mixed reviews -- ‘He won’t stick around,’ and ‘Those guys will bring it at him and he’ll come home crying,’ ” Dawkins said. “They had the wrong Darryl Dawkins. I accepted all the challenges.”

It wasn’t always so simple.

Bynum is an honor student who favors physics and hopes to be a civil engineer one day, but Dawkins implored the use of common sense that goes beyond schoolwork.

“If a girl’s coming at you looking good, smelling sweet, there ain’t any book knowledge that’s going to help you then,” Dawkins said. “When you come out of high school, you have a high school mentality. If he’s got good people around him, they can save him a lot of heartache and money.

“He’s got to learn who’s for him and who’s not for him. There’ll be a bunch of cling-ons. You’ll see them in Star Trek. The cling-ons will come. You don’t want to fall prey to them.”

There were other post players who tried to make the jump between Dawkins and Bynum.

Jermaine O’Neal was the youngest player drafted in league history until Bynum was taken Tuesday. O’Neal started slowly after coming out of Columbia (S.C) Eau Claire High in 1996, averaging only 3.9 points over his first four seasons with the Portland Trail Blazers. In his fifth season, after a trade to the Indiana Pacers, he awakened and eventually became one of the game’s top post players.

Kevin Garnett, drafted No. 5 overall in 1995 out of Farragut Academy in Chicago, fared the best of any high-school-turned-NBA centers, averaging 10.4 rebounds in his first season with the Minnesota Timberwolves and going on to become an eight-time All-Star.

There are less glorious stories.

In 2001 a rush of high school centers entered the draft. Of the four, two have had noteworthy careers -- Tyson Chandler (No. 2 overall) and Eddy Curry (No. 4), both of the Chicago Bulls -- but Kwame Brown (No. 1) and DeSagana Diop (No. 8) can be labeled nothing but NBA busts at this point.

Pete Newell, who has run the renowned “Big Man Camp” for almost 30 years, has worked with a young Shaquille O’Neal, a raw Hakeem Olajuwon and, most recently, a teenage Curry. He has seen centers come and go, NBA dreams materialize and fade away, a few teenage big men who were ready for the plunge but many more who weren’t.

“The main reason is a high school center probably hasn’t guarded or been guarded by a guy his size,” Newell said. “There’s so many things a center has to do -- rebounding, protecting the ball, outlet the ball on fastbreak. Many times they didn’t play against the same-size competition in high school and didn’t get a chance to practice what they needed because their backup center was 6-foot-3.”

Bynum says he hopes to follow mostly in the successful shadow of Garnett. When asked Thursday how soon he thought he could develop into an All-Star, he answered without hesitation.

“Realistically, I think that could happen in the first two years,” he said. “It just depends on how much work I can put in and I’m going to put in a lot.”

Kupchak, listening from afar, didn’t flinch.

“We don’t have a timetable drawn out,” he said later. “There is no master plan. Right now we’re taking baby steps. We don’t anticipate that he’s going to be a rotation player next year.”

Phil Jackson barely lets rookies on the team bus, but Dawkins said he thought Bynum could fill a need more quickly than expected.

“He won’t be riding the bench all year,” he said. “Look at the Lakers. They could use a big man, someone who could clog the middle and run.

“If he just practices well and pays attention, he’s going to be all right.”

The new collective bargaining agreement raised the minimum draft age to 19, effectively ending future moves from high school to the NBA. Newell wouldn’t disagree with it. Youth is not always served.

“Just coming from high school to college is a big, big step,” he said. “From high school to the NBA is not a step. It’s three leaps.”