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.

David Stern visited Bill Simmons’ podcast on Monday and discussed a wide-ranging set of issues, including a potential lockout and the possibility that the Hornets are contracted.

Whether the NBA will try to prevent locked-out players such as Kobe Bryant and Dirk Nowitzki, while still under contract to their NBA teams, from playing abroad during a potential work stoppage

“If, in fact, there’s a lockout, then the player is free during the course of the lockout to do what he wants to do if his contract is in effect. I don’t want to play that game with anybody. … If we have a collective bargaining arrangement with the union and there’s a lockout, then last time around [in 1998] players were free to do what they’re going to do, because they’ve been locked out.”

Conspiracy theories suggesting that one of the league’s motivations in buying the Hornets was to give itself the ability to easily contract one team for leverage in upcoming labor negotiations

“Well, I guess all I would say to that is that wouldn’t be a conspiracy. I know that there are some owners who might share that view. … Anything that we do gets done by a majority of the owners. All you’re stating is a potential third option. But right now we are steaming full speed ahead with every single possible [intent] to make that team successful in New Orleans, and I think we’re going to succeed. So we’re going to make it unattractive to move it or contract it.”

Click here to listen to the entire podcast.

I just listened to Bill Simmons’ post-Super Bowl podcast and he said that if the Giants had held on to beat the Eagles in Week 15, the Packers wouldn’t have made the playoffs. Peter King also said that the Packers have the Eagles to thank for their playoff berth.

Green Bay finished 10-6, the last Wild Card team and sixth seed in the NFC, by virtue of winning tiebreakers with the 10-6 Giants and 10-6 Bucs. We all know the Giants story: Up 31-10 over Philly at home with eight minutes left in the game, the Giants gave up 28 points in the last half of the fourth quarter and lost 38-31. The killer was punter Matt Dodge blowing the game and keeping a punt to DeSean Jackson inbounds with 14 seconds left in a 31-all game. Jackson returned it 65 yards for a touchdown. Who knows what would have happened if that game went to overtime, but that’ll stay a mystery.

Maybe I’m missing something here because, clearly, I’m not in the same league as Bill Simmons and Peter King. It appears that Simmons and King are counting the Giants’ win in Week 15, but aren’t considering the Eagles’ loss. If the Eagles lose that game in Week 15, they don’t win the East. The Giants win it at 11-5. Assuming Philly beats Dallas in Week 17 (a reasonable assumption since they didn’t play many of their starters in a 14-13 loss), the Eagles would have finished 10-6 and would have been tied with Tampa Bay and Green Bay for the 6th and final spot in the NFC. This assumes the Eagles would have still lost to the Vikings in Week 16, which is a fair assumption since they played their starters.

The first tiebraker between three teams is a head-to-head sweep, which isn’t applicable because the Bucs didn’t play either the Packers or the Eagles. The second tiebraker is conference record. The Bucs and Packers went 8-4 while the Eagles would have gone 7-5 (with a loss against NYG but a win against DAL), so the Eagles would have been eliminated at this point.

The next tiebraker is record in common games. Both teams were 2-3 in common games. The Packers beat the 49ers and the Lions, and lost to the Lions, Redskins and Falcons. The Bucs beat the 49ers and Redskins, and lost to the Falcons twice and the Lions.

The next tiebraker is strength of victory. I’m not sure how this is calculated or where I can find it, but acccording to CBSSports.com, that was the tiebraker that gave the Packers the No. 6 seed over the Giants and Bucs:

Green Bay is the No. 6 seed over the N.Y. Giants and Tampa Bay based on strength of victory (.475 to the Giants’ .400 and the Buccaneers’ .344).

So the Packers would have gotten the No. 6 seed over the Bucs. They would have played the Giants in the first round of the playoffs. Maybe they would have won or maybe they would have lost, but either way, they would have made the postseason.

So Bill Simmons and Peter King (and anyone else), please stop talking about the Week 15 Giants/Eagles game with regard to the Packers’ Super Bowl win. Thank you.

In his latest column, which is mostly about how certain NBA players are defying the aging process, Bill Simmons theorizes why stats are so much more important to baseball fans than they are to basketball fans.

For whatever reason, basketball fans don’t care about career NBA numbers like baseball fans care about baseball numbers. I see four reasons for this: (1) baseball has been around almost twice as long as basketball; (2) baseball’s signature threshold numbers are famously identifiable (500, 3,000 and 300), as are the players who broke its major records, whereas your average sports fan would struggle to answer questions like “Who leads the NBA in career scoring?”; (3) statistics matter more in baseball because it’s an individual sport; and (4) we need to throw ourselves into baseball statistics because the sport itself is so f—— boring. If we were eating lunch and I told you, “Johnny Damon has 2,571 hits right now,” that would mean something to you. If you’re a true baseball fan, you would process that information in 0.008 seconds and think, “He needs 429 for 3,000, that’s doable!” But if I told you “Dirk Nowitzki has 21,925 points right now,” you wouldn’t think anything other than, “That’s a lot.”

I agree with all four points. The only basketball stats I really care about are per game or season stats and that’s because I play fantasy hoops. It doesn’t really matter who is the league’s all-time leading scorer or who has dished out the most assists. The number of championships (Kobe potentially passing Michael Jordan in rings) is one that is important to a lot of NBA fans.

Keep in mind that Simmons, a Clippers season ticket holder, made a similar case last year that LeBron should come to L.A. and look how that turned out.

Anyway, here’s his case:

Griffin is the most meaningful in-the-air player since Shawn Kemp. Throw in his competitive streak and he did the impossible — he made Baron Davis care about basketball again. As my friend Tollin said last week, “It’s amazing; it’s like Baron has a purpose again.” He’s Blake’s dunk muse. Now the Clips have the foundation of something special: Griffin, Davis, Eric Gordon (a future All-Star) and enough left to make a legitimate offer for Denver: lottery pick Al-Farouq Aminu, Chris Kaman, expiring contracts and the rights to Minnesota’s unprotected 2012 pick (nearly as valuable a trade chip as Favors) for Carmelo and Al Harrington’s horrendous contract that’s the Carmelo Trade Tax. Mrs. Anthony could live in Hollywood and make her next unwatchable reality show. And her husband could play with Griffin, Gordon, Davis, Eric Bledsoe and DeAndre Jordan … a situation that’s between five and 20 times more appealing than New Jersey. Even when you include Donald Sterling.

From a basketball/quality of living standpoint, you couldn’t do much better than the situation with the Clippers. Anthony-Griffin-Gordon would make an excellent trio to build around and I’ll agree that the building blocks the Clippers could offer (Aminu, Kaman and Minnesota’s unprotected 2012 pick) are almost as good as what the Nets can offer.

But there’s one thing that stands in the way: Donald Sterling. The Nets’ owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, a.k.a. the Russian Mark Cuban, is infinitely more impressive and Simmons notes that LeBron thought that the Nets meeting was right up there with the Heat’s last summer.

It will be nice for Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton land in New Jersey with Melo, but only for a year or two, as both players are past their respective primes. It’s really about Brook Lopez and Mikhail Prokhorov versus Blake Griffin, Eric Gordon and Donald Sterling.