Kobe Bryant vs. Andrew Bynum: Who Is More Important vs. the OKC Thunder?

Hollywood needs a miracle.

The Los Angeles Lakers are down 0-2 against the heavily favored Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2012 NBA Playoffs. Only 14 teams in league history have battled back from such a postseason deficit.

What the Lakers must have to make that improbable comeback a reality is not a dominant Andrew Bynum—it’s a clutch Kobe Bryant.

What happened at the end of Game 2, there is not any other way to put it: Kobe choked.

But does that mean, all of a sudden, the Lakers don’t want the ball in his hands at the end of the game? No way.

After Bryant’s poor final two-minutes, Twitter ignited with a single theme: The same people that trash LeBron James for choking are not trashing Kobe! Hypocrites!

The fans that reacted in that manner don’t have a clue. And the reason why they’re clueless coincides with why Kobe is more important to an LA revival than Bynum.

Analogy time…

If you regularly eat lunch at Chipotle—the food is enjoyable—and one random day they screw up your order, are you going to relentlessly criticize them? No, it’s just one order. On the flip side, if you’re low on cash and head on over to Taco Bell who has repeatedly shown you poor customer service and they do it once again, you’re going to gripe far more than when Chipotle slipped up.

Bryant is proven in the clutch. His resume is undeniable. He—for the sake of this argument—is the Chipotle of crunch-time performers.

Like Kobe, LeBron consistently maintains his reputation—only as a choke artist. So when James shows you poor customer service, I mean, chokes again, naturally, the reaction to his failure is more passionate. He did it again as opposed to, it’s just one order.

Bryant’s name is prestigious for a reason: he is not a one-trick pony that does nothing but record impressive statistics.

His killer instinct sets him apart. It leads to wins. And just as he’s thrust the dagger into the hearts of so many opponents in the past, Los Angeles needs him to do it one more time.

Exactly like fans can’t expect LeBron to come up in the clutch, they’d be foolish to believe Bynum is capable of leading the Lakers to the Western Conference Finals.

Until this season, he’s been nothing more than a Plan C in the team’s offense. Yes, his ability to physically dominate the opposition is superior to Bryant’s at this point in Kobe’s career, but that does not mean the protégé has surpassed the mentor—not even close.

Experience is everything, especially in the playoffs.

Los Angeles is not going to roll over the Thunder. If that is not painfully obvious to you yet, it won’t ever be. 20 points, 15 rebounds and five blocks out of Bynum would be nice, but even with that performance, it’s likely that the Thunder’s three-headed perimeter monster kept pace with the Lakers anyway.

LA must outplay OKC late in the fourth quarter to string together multiple victories.

And late in the fourth quarter, are you really going to draw up a play for Bynum when you need a bucket? What’s more likely? Oklahoma City collapsing on the seven-footer, and like usual, Bynum struggling to avoid the double team with a pass or post-move, or Bryant turning the basketball over again?

In reality, Los Angeles needs each one of their players to play their best basketball to pull off a miraculous comeback. But in terms of an individual’s importance to the Lakers’ effort, no one—not Pau Gasol, not Andrew Bynum—is more valuable than Kobe.

David Daniels is a featured columnist at Bleacher Report and a syndicated writer.

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