"When the Lakers interviewed coaches to take over for Phil Jackson, team executive Jim Buss explicitly told candidates Brian Shaw and Mike Brown that Andrew Bynum needed to get the ball down low.

Early and aplenty.

Brown will put it to the test when Bynum returns from a four-game suspension Saturday against the Denver Nuggets.

"He's going to see it probably a lot more than what he did in the past," Brown said. "But he's going to have to be able to do something with it in order to get it and keep getting it."

Bynum should be pleasantly surprised to be that high in the Lakers' offensive scheme.

He experienced 48 hours of raging criticism last May from all corners, including many Lakers fans, after driving his forearm into the rib cage of an in-flight Jose Barea during the Lakers' playoff finale against Dallas.

The NBA originally suspended Bynum five games for belting the tiny guard, but reduced it to four to account for the 19.5% reduction of the lockout-shortened season from 82 games to 66.

Bynum originally would have forfeited $677,272 in salary and was also fined $25,000 for removing his jersey as he left the court after getting ejected. It was his second suspension in the last year. He drew a two-game penalty last March for flattening Minnesota forward Michael Beasley.

"Suspensions are definitely weird. It hurt," Bynum said of his latest one. "You're kind of just sitting out, watching all the games on the telly. That's what I did."

He averaged 11.3 points and 9.4 rebounds last season, his sixth with the Lakers, and his scoring was actually down from 15 points a game in 2009-10."