Cashing in on a big return

And then came Andrew.

Of course, Andrew Bynum came back for only 21 minutes in his long-awaited return Thursday night, scoring 16 points with seven rebounds.

Said Bynum, asked whether he was pleased or disappointed: “A little bit of both.”

On the bright side for the Lakers, he was just warming up. Better yet, it was 16 more points, seven more rebounds and 21 more minutes than he had after his knee injury last season, considering he never did return then.

In a related development, the Lakers beat the Nuggets, the new No. 2 team in the West that had won eight games in a row and 13 of 14. Denver was reduced to a supporting player in Thursday’s dramatic story of a young man’s courageous return from a small tear in the cartilage of his right knee.

The Lakers went 25-7 in their nine weeks and five days without Bynum. The team had projected he would miss eight to 12 weeks, which may have been cautious, to say the least.

A week after Bynum was hurt in Memphis on Jan. 31, the Clippers followed them into town, where Grizzlies staffers said they were surprised to hear the injury was as serious.

For nine weeks and five days, the Lakers said as little as possible, doing their best to make Bynum a non-issue . . . no small trick with a 7-foot starting center in a season in which the suspense ended long ago.

In New York, there might have been headlines screaming, What are they hiding? and Andrew: Kidnapped by aliens?

In Lakerdom, everyone kept it together, more or less, although Coach Phil Jackson began getting enough questions about Bynum after losses that he announced he wouldn’t even discuss it again until April.

After the Lakers won 11 of their first 12, beating the Celtics in Boston and the Cavaliers in Cleveland, Denver Coach George Karl actually threw out the possibility that the Lakers were better without Bynum.

“Why do we always say Bynum?” Karl said. “How many games has he played for this team?

“I like Bynum. I think he’s a great player. But sometimes you can have too much talent out there and it can kind of be confusing.”

Said Karl before Thursday’s game, clinging to his position, more or less:

“They’re good with Odom. They’re the top two or three team in basketball with Odom. Can they get to the top of the mountain playing two 7-footers?” referring to Bynum and Pau Gasol.

“You have to remember, there haven’t been a lot of teams the last few years with two 7-footers. The game has actually gone away from the big guy, away from the big, power game.”

Since Tim Duncan is really only about 6-foot-10, the three titles the San Antonio Spurs won with him and David Robinson from 1999 to 2003 may not count technically, or represent modern trends.

Nevertheless, the Lakers will take their chances. In fact, the sight of two 7-foot shot-blockers scares the rest of the league silly, including Karl.

“When Bynum and Gasol play together, their power and prevalence around the basket is very difficult to take out of the game,” Karl said before the game.

“I’m hoping that over the time Bynum has been hurt, he’s developed a jump shot and would prefer to shoot from 18 feet, not around the basket. Maybe with his knee, he would feel better without contact.”

And then, there’s the Kobe Bryant-Bynum pick-and-roll, which they barely ran Thursday but should be going back to before too long.

“What I saw earlier in the season was, Kobe liked throwing the ball to Bynum,” Karl said. “And that was kind of the scary thing. I went, ‘Oh man.’

“I would have liked to see him not like throwing the ball to Bynum, but that wasn’t the case earlier in the year.”

In the bad news for the Nuggets, Bynum didn’t try a shot longer than 12 feet and made seven of his 11 attempts. With the Lakers playing raggedly, the Nuggets kept it close most of the way before losing by only 14.

That’s as good as the news got for Denver and 13 other teams in the Western Conference on Thursday night.

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mark.heisler@latimes.com