Throughout the playoffs Lakers fans have proven themselves to be wildly biased with a propensity towards whining. Lakers fans would rather make excuses, ranging from “the refs were against us!” to “Paul Pierce isn’t REALLY injured! he was OBVIOUSLY faking it!”, than admit that they got outplayed. But the most outrageous excuse I have heard is “if we had Bynum we’d be killing the Celtics.”

Lakers fans have described Bynum as the missing piece to their puzzle. A defensive anchor in the middle that plays physical. First Gasol was the missing piece, and now Bynum is the missing piece. How many more missing pieces does this team have?

About 2, the Lakers need a good perimeter defender to take the best guard so Kobe doesn’t expend his energy and they need a distributing PG. They don’t need another post player. My blog is based on the assumption that the Lakers will be worse with a starting lineup including Odom, Gasol, and Bynum rather than their starting lineup. I broke this theory down into 4 points, so enjoy.

1) A lineup with 3 big men is extremely immobile.

Contrary to the Laker fans theory of “height=dominance” a more apt analogy would be “too much height=immobility.” By starting Bynum at the 5, you slide Gasol to the 4. I’ve heard people say that Gasol can take outside shots and that would not be a problem. To be frank about it, the only outside shots Gasol takes are wide open rhythm foul line jumpers. Additionally, Odom would slide over to the 4. Seeing as Odom is basically a 2/3 trapped in a 4’s body, people would be led to believe this is a good move. The only reason Odom is so successful at the 4 is because he brings an unusual skill set to the position, a skill set that would be negated and rendered useless at SF where his lack of quickness would be constantly put on display.

2) A lineup with 3 big men creates a clogged lane.

Bynum scores on dunks, Gasol scores on low post isos, and for the majority of Odom’s points he scores them in the paint. See a problem here? 3 guys are looking to score in the paint without much room and slashers like Kobe still have to make it into the paint to score. The Knicks had two low post guys this year, and they cannibalized each other on the inside beacuse of a lack of space. The same can be seen with the Clippers. Kaman flourished without Brand taking half the paint away from him, and I expect the same dilemma to befall the Lakers. People can argue that Lamar does have an outside game and this shouldn’t matter, but honestly, do you want Lamar taking all of his shots from 15+ feet out? He’s not a reliable shooter out there.

3) Lamar Odom cannot guard SFs.

The Small Forwards in the West are either pure shooters (Peja) or quick slashers (Melo). Lamar Odom has the quickness of a PF so he will get burnt by the Melos and his height will be put to waste when he’s forced to go out to the arc and guard the Pejas. You can’t put a PF at SF and expect him to compete. You might as well tell Kobe that you didn’t only fail to get him perimeter help defensively, but you made your team even worse at guarding the backcourt.

4) Lamar Odom loses every offensive advantage he has at SF.

Like I said earlier, Lamar Odom has the skill set of a 2 or a 3, but the quickness and speed of a 4. He’s successful at the 4 because he’s a better ball handler than the players guarding him and can create like a point forward. With quicker guys guarding him, this won’t happen. SF is probably the deepest position in the NBA and Odom will be out-run nightly. His ability to put the ball on the floor is essentially a requirement for SFs, so his special skills won’t be anything special. Odom won’t be able to create any separation from his defender because nobody will respect his 3 point shot and the only thing to watch out for would be his mid-range jumper. He’s no Monta Ellis when it comes to mid-range shots so don’t expect him to be successful. Lakers fans have brought up the point that “Odom’s bigger, so he’s just going to post people up at the 3 and dominate.” Not quite, Odom is not a good post up player and he won’t have the quickness to beat his man and make a move in the post. Odom isn’t going to change any games posting up other SFs.

This basically leaves the Lakers with a couple choices. They can start Odom and Gasol and bench Bynum, which is a bad move because it slows Bynum’s growth or they can trade Odom for some perimeter defense and a real SF. The first idea would still lead to all of the problems I mentioned when the big 3 are inevitably in the game at the same time, but the second idea seems to be the most feasible. Expect to see Kupchak shop Odom around the league if he has any idea what he’s doing.