Roland Lazenby of HoopsHype says that with Jim Buss’ emergence in basketball operations, Andrew Bynum is the centerpiece of the Laker franchise.

Fans will discover they’re witnessing the new Lakers, the ones run by Jim Buss and built to cater in every facet to seven-footer Andrew Bynum, a nice enough 23-year-old kid with a dubious medical past and an even more suspect future.

Yes, aging star Kobe Bryant will still be a part of the equation, but he was put on notice over the summer when Jim Buss hired new coach Mike Brown without so much as a brief discussion with Bryant.

The message is clear: Brown is Bynum’s coach, and the team belongs to the young center as well.

Why did the Lakers hire Brown?

As for offense, Bynum has long made noise that he wants to be more of a priority. Brown was hired after touting his experience as an assistant coach with San Antonio’s big guns team that featured Tim Duncan on offense.

Bryant said little publicly after Brown’s hiring, but he did make it clear that he and Pau Gasol would remain the first two options in the Lakers offense.

Bynum “will have to fall in line,” Bryant has been quoted as saying.

There is trouble brewing in L.A. if the younger Buss wants to feature Bynum over Bryant and Gasol. Kobe does not look like he’s prepared to go quietly into the dark night, and the Lakers will be his team as long as he’s putting on the jersey.

But it appears that instead of trading Bynum for another piece to the championship puzzle, the Lakers are going to build around him. This would be fine if he didn’t have a long, troublesome history of injury, but he does. Can a franchise really depend on those knees?

Worst case scenario is that the Lakers hold onto Bynum and he has more knee trouble after Kobe and Gasol’s age drastically impacts their productivity. The Lakers could be in for some lean years, especially if they recommit to Bynum after his contract expires. But the Lakers are one of the league’s two marquee franchises (along with the Knicks), so it shouldn’t be too difficult to reload, assuming the new salary cap rules allow it.

In his annual trade value column, Bill Simmons discusses how Andrew Bynum’s first six seasons rank amongst his historical peers.

38. Andrew Bynum
A list of the most memorable centers and power forwards of the past 35 years organized by their first six regular seasons for “games played,” “games missed” and “number of seasons in which they played 90 percent of the games.”

Dwight Howard: 489 — 3 — 6
Karl Malone: 489 — 3 — 6
Tim Duncan: 451 — 9 — 5
David Robinson: 475 — 17 — 5
Kevin McHale: 475 — 17 — 5
Charles Barkley: 472 — 20 — 6
Dikembe Mutombo: 471 –21 — 5
Robert Parish: 469 — 23 — 5
Hakeem Olajuwon: 468 — 24 — 5
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: 467 — 25 — 5
Dirk Nowitzki: 444 — 48 — 5
Kevin Garnett: 442 — 50 — 5
Patrick Ewing: 438 — 54 — 4
Moses Malone: 428 — 66 — 4
Alonzo Mourning: 409 — 83 — 2
Shaquille O’Neal: 408 — 84 — 2
Yao Ming: 404 — 88 — 3
Ralph Sampson: 395 — 97 — 3
Chris Webber: 329 — 131 — 1
Andrew Bynum: 309 — 169 — 1
Bill Walton: 223 — 269 — 0
Sam Bowie: 207 — 285 — 1
Greg Oden: 82 — 266 — 0

What jumps out? First, the durable guys remained durable throughout their careers, with just one exception: McHale, who ruined the second half of his career by bravely (and some would say foolishly) playing on a broken foot in the 1987 playoffs. Second, anyone who missed more than 80 games and couldn’t play in 90 percent of the games in at least four of their first six seasons went on to have injury-plagued careers. (That includes Shaq, who played more than 68 games in a season just six times and missed an average of 18 games per season.) And third, if you can’t stay on the court at your youngest/healthiest/freshest/most energetic, it’s a pretty safe bet that things won’t change as you get older. It’s straight DNA: Some dudes are structurally built for 82-game NBA seasons, others aren’t. So if you make the argument “If Bynum can stay healthy, he’s a franchise center,” just make sure you also mention that we have 35 years of evidence that there’s a tipping point when “If he can stay healthy …” becomes “… he’s not going to stay healthy.” We’re there with Andrew Bynum. He’s not going to stay healthy. If I were the Lakers, I would trade him right now.

(Actually, what am I saying? They should definitely keep him! The guy is built like solid oak!)

I still don’t know why the Lakers are so intent on holding onto Bynum in this scenario unless they are simply convinced that Carmelo wouldn’t fit in with the 2011 Lakers or are going all in, hoping that Bynum’s knees will hold up until the end of June so that Kobe can get his sixth ring.

Bynum doesn’t even finish games, so the Lakers are theoretically passing on a multiple All-NBA forward for a guy who always rides the pine in crunch time. It’s truly ponderous — I don’t care what Jon Barry says.

Mark Heisler of the L.A. Times asserts that the Worldwide Leader promoted the dead on arrival Carmelo Anthony/Andrew Bynum trade rumors just to get ratings and hits.

ESPN’s Chris Broussard reported “preliminary discussions about a blockbuster trade.”

Cellphones on the Lakers beat started ringing like the hot line from Moscow.

With the advantage of years developing Lakers sources . . . as opposed to trusting a single source, like the one who assured everyone Anthony was New Jersey-bound . . . local writers got denials across the board and, significantly, nothing suggesting Jim Buss doesn’t still dote on Bynum.

This is a beat writer (who has multiple sources with the team he covers) taking aim at a national writer (who may only have one source). Heisler’s accusation falls squarely on the shoulders of Broussard and those producers at ESPN who decided to promote this story/rumor based on Broussard’s source(s).

This doesn’t change the fact that the Lakers should absolutely trade Bynum for Carmelo, if they have the opportunity.

Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted that the Lakers aren’t planning to trade Andrew Bynum, even for Carmelo Anthony.

NY will work trade on its terms but knows it can get Melo in free agency. Anyway, Jim Buss has made it clear within org: Bynum is staying.

If I were a Laker fan (which I’m not), I’d be furious about the position that Buss is taking here. Furious.

I get it — Bynum is a good player when he’s healthy. But over the past four seasons, including the postseason, he has missed 172 of the Lakers’ 395 games (43.5%) due to issues with his knees. There are a few things I’ve learned about knee injuries over the years: 1) knee problems aren’t good for basketball players, 2) knee problems aren’t good for seven-footers and 3) knee problems don’t usually just go away.

The Lakers almost always finish games with Pau Gasol at center and Lamar Odom at small forward. So they’re unwilling to trade an injury-prone player (that they don’t even play in crunch time) for a 26-year-old, five time All-NBA performer?

Are they nuts?

The only — and I mean only — reason I can see for this inflexibility would be that the Lakers are expecting to see the Celtics again in the Finals. If healthy, Bynum would certainly help battle Shaq and Kendrick Perkins down low. But there are a few problems with this thinking: 1) the Lakers aren’t playing all that well right now and could use some new blood, 2) they will face stiff competition from the Spurs, Mavs and Thunder just to get out of the West, and 3) there’s a good chance that the Celtics don’t make the Finals, and the Lakers will instead face the Heat, the Bulls or even the Magic.

If it’s the Heat or Bulls, wouldn’t the Lakers much rather have Carmelo than Bynum? What about the Spurs, Mavs and Thunder? None of those teams have a true center that only Bynum could defend (unless you count Tim Duncan, whom I think Gasol could handle in a pinch). If the Lakers need another big man, I’m sure the Nuggets would include Nene or Chris Andersen at a reasonable price.

Of course, the Nuggets may not even want Bynum at this point, though if the Wilson Chandler/Corey Brewer package is the best offer they’re getting, I would think any package including Bynum would be better. There are rumors floating around that Carmelo’s camp leaked the supposed Nuggets/Lakers talks to get the Knicks to panic a little and up their offer. Someone close to Carmelo even said that he’d definitely re-up with the Lakers if he was traded there.

Hmmm…methinks there’s some gamesmanship afoot.

Regardless, if the Lakers can get a five-time All-NBA performer at the expense of a seven-footer with bad knees who doesn’t even finish games, I think they should do it.

To quote Kobe from a few years ago, “Are you kidding me? Ship his ass out.“

The Lakers withstood a lights-out shooting clinic by Ray Allen in the first half (7-for-7 from long range) and only trailed by six at halftime. They actually led by three with 5:20 to play, but the Celtics rattled off 11 straight points to take an eight-point lead with just 1:12 to play. They went on to win, 103-94.

The Boston backcourt was the key to the game. Rajon Rondo posted his fifth career playoff triple-double (19-12-10) and Ray Allen poured in 32 points on 8-of-11 shooting from long range. Nate Robinson also came off the bench to score seven points in a crucial six-minute stretch early in the fourth quarter. His play gave Doc Rivers an opportunity to rest a winded Rondo, which made him fresh for the stretch run (where he made several key plays to win the game).

Kevin Garnett (6-4-6) didn’t play very well but had a few nice assists in the second half. Likewise, Paul Pierce went 2-of-11 and scored just 10 points. In the pregame, Mark Jackson stressed that the C’s had to outplay the Lakers at the forward positions, but it was the Boston guards who decided the game. When the Celtics were able to get stops, they were really pushing the ball via Rondo, and that led to open shots.

Kobe finished with 21-5-6 but shot just 8-of-20 from the field and was saddled with foul trouble the entire game. His fifth foul, a charge drawn by Glen Davis, was a bad call. Davis was not even close to set when Kobe was in the air. The announcers get so caught up at looking to see if the feet are outside of the restricted area that they ignore the fact that the player’s feet are still moving.

Pau Gasol (25-8, six blocks) had another nice game and was incredibly efficient, scoring all of those points on just 10 shots. There was some media-created controversy over some comments he made about how both he and Garnett have lost a step, but Gasol clearly got the better of KG again tonight. Andrew Bynum posted 21-6 and had seven blocks, so how did the Lakers lose?

Well, Ron Artest shot 1-10 from the field and had a couple of bad plays down the stretch, including a terrible post feed that rolled out of bounds and a possession where he dribbled the ball around and forced up a double-clutch three-pointer. He did play good defense on Pierce, however. Lamar Odom was a no-show, scoring just three points in 15 minutes. He finished with five fouls and Bynum’s fine play kept him on the bench.

You have to hand it to the Celtics. The chips were down and their backs were up against the proverbial wall, and they pulled out a much needed win. Now the series heads back to Boston for Game 3 on Tuesday, and I’m a little worried about how the Celtics’ old bones are going to deal with the cross country flight and quick turnaround.

Photo from fOTOGLIF