The defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers have had it pretty easy to start off the season as they have been able to play the majority of their games at home so far this season with 26 games at home (23-3) and 18 game on the road (10-8).

Unfortunately, the Lakers recent road trip hasn’t been turning out the way they had hoped as they have already lost two of the first three games on the road to the Cleveland Cavaliers (93-87) and the Toronto Raptors (106-105). Both of these games against LeBron James and the Cavs and Chris Bosh and the Raptors were no doubt games that could have easily been one by Kobe Bryant and company, but they just fell short in the fourth quarter and basically handed the game over to the other team.

As if the start to the eight game road wasn’t bad enough, it seems that the recent trade rumors involving young Lakers center Andrew Bynum might finally be getting to the big kid as he missed the team’s flight from New York to Toronto Saturday morning and had to take a commercial flight in order to play the Raptors on Sunday night which ironically is the team that Bynum has been linked with in the most recent trade rumors.

Apparently, Andrew Bynum’s excuse for missing the team’s plane was that he just slept in too late and happened to miss the flight. Sounds pretty weak to me and I would fully expect a pretty hefty fine from the Lakers to come down soon for Bynum’s lack of responsibility.

Even though this is someone that is pretty common place in the professional sports, I believe there is a lot more to this story involving Andrew Bynum and a trade for the big kid could be on its way as he may have just lost all motivation with the Lakers who seemed like they had Bynum in their long term plans in Los Angeles.

Whatever the case may be, we will all certainly find out when the NBA trade deadline ends on February 18th.