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Derek Bodner will take an in-depth look at Andrew Bynum's role within the Sixers offense next week. But, in the meantime, Zach Harper, of Bleacher Report (he's a great writer – promise), and Sebastian Pruiti, of Grantland, recently broke down Bynum's strengths and weaknesses, and what it means for the Sixers.
Overall, the idea of Bynum as a No. 1 option still worries me for Philadelphia because he is so bad against double-teams. Maybe with some time under his belt, he can get more comfortable against them and figure out a way to make the defense pay.
As of right now, there are creative ways to feature Bynum in the offense without just pounding it inside and waiting for him to do something. Doug Collins has options and the current personnel of his team with Holiday, Turner and Hawes can definitely complement what Bynum is good at.
Harper uses videos from Synergy to further break down Bynum's game – it's absolutely worth checking out. He also makes an interesting case for starting Hawes, alongside Bynum.
His two best skills are his ability to work in the post (55.6 percent of possessions/PPP of 0.897/74th percentile) and his ability to read dribble penetration and cut off of it (16.3 percent of possessions/PPP of 1.553/96th percentile). Those are two things the Sixers didn't do much. They rarely posted guys up (9.3 percent of the time), and they rarely hit cutters (only 9.7 percent of the time). This is probably a result of having ball-dominant, score-first players like Jrue Holiday and Lou Williams on the perimeter. With Bynum's ability to create space and passing lanes for himself, Holiday and Nick Young, who replaced Williams, are going to have to adjust and start looking for the big man on dribble penetration.
The Sixers didn't post up, because they didn't have anyone capable of posting up. And no one, outside of Thad, could consistently cut to the basket, and finish. While I agree that Jrue and Evan – not Nick Young – will have to adjust their games to feed Bynum, that's like saying Justin Verlander will have to stop hitting on grenades at the bar, because he's dating Kate Upton now – it won't be that difficult.
We just went from this at center, to this. UPGRADE.