"Humbled Lakers filed through the club's offices Tuesday to have individual performance reviews.

Even before meeting up Mitch Kupchak and Phil Jackson, the players were reintroduced to an old acquaintance they hadn't seen in awhile.

His name? Motivation.

"Great things are borne out of defeat and adversity and struggle," Derek Fisher said. "After the pain somewhat starts to wear off, that's how we're going to start looking at this – as an opportunity to be better and stronger than we ever were."

The first player to meet with management was Andrew Bynum, appropriate considering he was the only player actually to have been better and stronger this season. For just about everyone else on the team, it was a variation on David Spade's getting-fatter comment to an eating Chris Farley in the movie "Tommy Boy":

You could sit there at a game and actually hear the Lakers getting older.

Not so with Bynum, who at 23 and with the help of Jackson's mental-health guru George Mumford clicked newfound focus and production into place after the All-Star break.

Bynum became dominant on defense and in rebounding – and surged past Pau Gasol as the primary interior option on offense in the playoffs. If there was one Laker who could rightly rest on some individual laurels now, it's Bynum.

And that's why his insanely stupid and dangerous flagrant foul on Dallas' J.J. Barea on Sunday will turn out to be a good thing for him – just as the Lakers' wasteful treatment of this season can be redeemed in their future.

Bynum apologized Tuesday for what he did, calling it "terrible," but he can't just put the play behind him now that the NBA suspended him five games. For removing his jersey, Bynum was fined $25,000 – which with the lost wages during the suspension adds up to $702,273, nearly equaling Devin Ebanks' scheduled salary for next season and almost half of Barea's for this season."