The Big Question

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Lee Andrew Bynum has now worn a Laker uniform for two weeks, and when he wasn't surrounded by microphones, TV cameras and autograph-seeking kids, he managed to give the Lakers and their fans a glimpse into the future.

It looked like a mixed bag.
Playing eight games in Long Beach's Summer Pro League, which concluded last week, the Lakers' 6-foot-11, 270-pound top draft choice showed flashes of glorious potential ? and all but disappeared during other spans.

"It's not any different from what I expected," Bynum said of his first taste of professional basketball. "I expected it to be tough and it's definitely tough."

And that, of course, was during a summer league that includes precious few players who will make NBA rosters next season.

The Lakers saw what they expected too. In taking Bynum 10th overall with their highest draft selection in 11 years, the team knew it was taking a calculated risk, choosing long-term potential over the temptation of taking a more polished player as a quick fix.

"I think it's gone as good as we can hope, keeping in mind that it's just a summer league," General Manager Mitch Kupchak said after Bynum was held to four points in the team's final game. "We don't want him really playing next year, or the year behind it. Certainly that's not in the plans."

But while downplaying their immediate expectations for a player still three months shy of his 18th birthday, the Lakers are more heavily invested than even the two-year, $3.8-million contract they recently gave to Bynum might imply.

Having become enamored with his 7-foot-6 wingspan, soft hands and shooting touch around the basket during private workouts, they took him at No. 10 this year because they figured they'd need a top-three pick to get a player like him in another year or two.

And so, if only in potential, he suddenly became heir apparent to such luminaries as Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O'Neal at center of the NBA's most glamorous team ? one that missed the playoffs last season for the first time since 1994.

Heady stuff for a kid from St. Joseph High in Metuchen, N.J., who wasn't even among the 16 players the NBA invited to sit in an area especially designated for them at the draft. When Bynum was chosen, he emerged from the general admission seats at New York City's Madison Square Garden, where he and his family were among thousands of others who paid $15 a ticket to watch the proceedings.

Indeed, Bynum, who likes to play chess and alien-invasion video games in his spare time, has his share of skeptics who question his talent as a basketball player. A few of them come from close to home.</div>

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