Michael Ventre

Waiting is never easy.

Who likes waiting in line? Most of us would much rather be ushered through the VIP entrance. Waiting for a loved one to call can be taxing. Waiting for money to arrive can be agonizing.

In Laker Nation, waiting has been brutal. And it looks like its inhabitants will have to wait even longer.

The Lakers found out Monday that their young center, Andrew Bynum, will be out eight to 12 weeks after tearing the medial collateral ligament in his right knee. This comes as basketball fans were waiting in great anticipation of two glitzy games this week, the Lakers at Boston on Thursday, and at LeBronville on Sunday.

And then there is that excruciating wait for another NBA championship. Considering the timing of Bynum’s injury — which occurred in the second game of a six-game road trip — fans won’t have to wait long to see if these diminished Lakers can rise to the occasion and withstand his absence.

“We went through it last year,” Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak said on Monday. “I thought we adjusted very well. We'll just have to do the same thing this year. Fortunately we have other big players and they’ll have to take advantage of the opportunity.

“We’ll hopefully get Andrew back in timely fashion and that’s the way it is. Injuries are part of the NBA.”

Kupchak and the Lakers know that too well. Last year they lost Bynum to an injury to the other knee. He went down on Jan. 13, 2008, also against Memphis. Those Grizzlies really know how to hurt an opposing fan base.

And we all saw what happened next. While waiting for Bynum to return, the Lakers remained driven — until they ran into the Celtics in the NBA Finals.

The difference is there were few expectations for those Lakers. Think back to the Kobe Bryant scorched earth media blitz in the spring of 2007, when he expressed great displeasure with the direction of the franchise. Then in 2007-08, Bynum began to play not like a listless, disoriented teenager whom Bryant saw only as trade bait, but as a potential star. Suddenly the Lakers were viable.

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Bynum went down. The team traded to obtain Pau Gasol. The Lakers were still viable.

So when they faltered against a more experienced and more tenacious Celtics team in the 2008 NBA Finals, their fans eased up. They were gratified with this team’s promise, and they were willing to wait.

Wait they did. But Bynum never came back, even though hints kept dropping that he would.

Now the basketball world is sitting through another groundhog day. Instead of a maximum-strength Lakers squad building momentum toward the postseason, the team is in triage mode again, trying to stem the flow of blood.

Even with Bynum, there was no clear indication that this Lakers team would fare better than last year’s edition. The club did nothing to improve in the offseason. Some of that was because of salary cap restrictions, but mostly the Lakers’ brass believed that getting Bynum and forward Trevor Ariza back healthy represented sufficient improvement to get out of the West and defeat the Celtics in a seven-game series.

But even with Bynum playing outrageously effective basketball — which he was recently, before he went down — the Lakers did not make the kind of dramatic improvement on the defensive end that would have said to the world, “Look out, Celtics.” Defensively, they were an enigma even with Bynum.