Andrew Bynum put blood in the water for the Philadelphia media when he confirmed that he injured his knee on a bowling trip. Since Bynum’s comment on his injury didn’t create enough PR work for his agent, here is another potential fire that will need to get put out courtesy of Spike Eskin of CBSPhilly.com (via probasketballtalk.com), who asked Slam Magazine Editor Tzvi Twersky about Bynum’s bowling incident and got this response:
“I started investigating [the bowling] a little bit,” Twersky said. “And one of the people that I hit, a guy who has played with him before, he texted me back and said ‘I don’t know if that’s true [the bowling], but I do know that I’ve never met another player in the league who likes basketball less [than Bynum].”
“The disclaimer is, I don’t know Andrew like that. From what I hear, he’s a good guy,” Twersky said. “But the fact that I heard this from a guy who has played with him before, it kind of made me think, ‘what’s going on here exactly?’ That’s not the kind of a guy that I necessarily want to be maxing out.”
Now if you’re a Sixers fan it’s perfectly reasonable to dismiss Twersky’s report since it is based on hearsay from an anonymous source, and Twersky gave a personal disclaimer saying that he doesn’t know Bynum very well. You could also make a strong argument that there are probably more pro athletes than we think who, despite possessing immense talent, don’t really enjoy playing the sports that they excel in. Recent NFL Hall of Fame inductee Curtis Martin is a great example. However, we didn’t learn about Curtis Martin’s lack of passion for football while he was still an active player. He waited until his Hall of Fame speech to tell us about it. This is not the first time that we have had to question Andrew Bynum’s passion for playing basketball. This is the same Andrew Bynum who trivialized the possibility of being traded from the NBA’s most iconic franchise back in February by saying he was fine because “there’s a bank in every city and I’m going to play hard basketball wherever I go.”
Whether Bynum is passionate about money or basketball, he still may very well prove to be worth the risk for the Sixers since the Eastern Conference is wide open after Miami. Let’s hope the Sixers and pending free agent Andrew Bynum can get one good dance on the court together…bands or not.