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NBA: 30 best careers from players who skipped college

By Josh Cornelissen

LeBron James, Miami Heat and Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers. Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images
LeBron James, Miami Heat and Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers. Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images /
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Andrew Bynum
Andrew Bynum Photo by Harry How/Getty Images /

30 best careers from players who skipped college – 14. Andrew Bynum

Star players didn’t simply produce for themselves, but they also provided an environment for other players to thrive. Former prep-to-pro player Kobe Bryant did that for his teammates, including the seven-foot teenager the Los Angeles Lakers drafted in 2005.

Andrew Bynum was a New Jersey native and dominated inside as a high schooler, electing to bypass the University of Connecticut and go straight to the NBA. The Lakers took him with the tenth pick, landing a center to grow into the Shaquille O’Neal shaped void in their roster. He would become the youngest player ever drafted, 12 days younger than Jermaine O’Neal.

By his second season, Bynum was already starting for the Lakers, cleaning the glass on a team that effectively existed to support Kobe Bryant scoring buckets. With the spotlight on the Black Mamba, Bynum could take his time growing into his body and his potential. By his third season, he was averaging 13.1 points and 10.2 rebounds per game. By his fourth, he was starting in the NBA Finals on a championship team, then repeating the following year in 2010.

Bynum’s issue through the first seven years of his career were injuries; he missed games in all but one season with a variety of ailments. Even so by the age of 24, he was an All-Star with the Lakers, pouring in 18.7 points and 11.8 rebounds per game. By the end of the season, he was named to an All NBA team.

That production made him a valuable centerpiece in a four-team trade that brought fellow prep-to-pro center Dwight Howard to Los Angeles and landed Andrew Bynum in Philadelphia. The Orlando Magic reportedly elected not to add Bynum on account of his oft-injured knees. That turned out to be prescient, as Bynum missed the entire season with a knee injury.

He was never able to shake the continual injuries, playing just 26 games the next season. That would prove to be the end of his career, one defined by production when he was on the court and the number of times he never made it onto that court. Over nine seasons he missed 320 of a possible 738 games or a whopping and depressing 43 percent. One of the prep-to-pro’s brightest young talents, he was robbed of the chance to truly see that talent realized.