Lakernoise

Thirty minutes, 28 seconds.

Twelve rebounds.

Four blocks. Four blocks!

Thirteen points on six of 10 shooting.

Two fouls. Two fouls!

Then there’s the sheer size. Somehow you can never quite fit Andrew Bynum’s size into a box score. His long reach and anchoring presence were so obviously, stupendously important Sunday.

The big cat of a Lakers center came right off of 13 games on the injured list with a strained Achilles and reminded everyone of just how important his presence is to the championship hopes of Phil Jackson’s club.

Having just been cleared this past week to practice and play, Bynum had no real chance for even a tune-up in practice. No late-season minutes to test his strained Achilles. No easing him back in. Instead, the Lakers were just flying blind with Bynum Sunday.

Yes, everyone sort of knew his value all along, but pro basketball is a day-to-day, game-to-game business. And Bynum’s health had been a huge question mark down the back stretch of an odd regular season.

Just in case anyone wanted to hold onto doubt for too long, Bynum issued a reminder to the assembled Staples Center audience, as the Lakers pushed past the eighth seeded Oklahoma City Thunder, 87-79, in Game 1 of their first round series Sunday.

“He looked comfortable,” teammate Derek Fisher observed. “He looked strong. He looked explosive. He was decisive with his movements and he didn’t look afraid to load up the Achilles and push himself.”

Bynum’s size was especially a huge help in the team effort of slowing down OKC’s fine young gun of a forward, Kevin Durant, which Jackson’s club did with ease enough. Durant shot seven for 24 from the floor, made it to the free throw line a moderate 11 times, and finished with 24 points, well shy of the better than 30 ppg he posted during the regular season.

The fact that Jackson would start Bynum might seem a mild surprise, given his iffy status over the closing weeks of the regular season. The circumstances seemed all the more iffy because Jackson has long expressed private doubts that Bynum can remain healthy over the course of a season.

Experience has borne out those doubts. Bynum has been injured for so much of his tenure with the Lakers. Fragile is a word that has come to mind.

Still, it made sense to start him. Jackson could take a look at him early and find out how much the coaching staff might expect to get from the young center.

As, it turned out, they would get a lot. And not just from Bynum.

Forward Ron Artest finally showed that lock-down playoff defense that he was rumored to be packing. It was the high caliber sort of stuff he threw at the Lakers last year in the playoffs when he was wearing the uniform of the Houston Rockets.

Bynum, Artest, Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Derek Fisher all combined to give an impressive team defensive effort to establish some order in this first-round series against the NBA’s youngest — and some would say most talented — team.

Yes, it’s only one game, one step in the 16-win process that is an NBA championship. But it was a particularly good first step. And it came just as the doubt had gotten quite deep in L.A. in March and April as the Lakers had stumbled and bumbled down the stretch.

Bynum roared back to work and posted his big reminder. So hats off to Jim Buss and anyone else in the Lakers organization who has championed and protected Bynum from Jackson’s sometimes unfathomable approach with young players.

Still, as grand as it was, Bynum’s performance also served as another sort of reminder. He was playing on adrenaline. Can he sustain such a pace? Probably not. Probably shouldn’t try.

The bigger question is, can he remain healthy for the entire playoffs?

If Bynum can hold up, the Lakers have a good chance to compete at a very high level. Fisher was ready to predict that Bynum’s a player other teams don’t want to see.

Yet the fact that we’re even addressing such a question suggests just how sheer those Laker hopes really are.

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, recently released by ESPN Books.