Lakers starting center Andrew Bynum will be fined an undisclosed amount by the team believed to be about $250 for missing the team's charter flight from New York to Toronto on Saturday morning.
"I slept in," Bynum said before the Lakers played the Raptors on Sunday. "I put my bags outside and then I went to sleep."
Bynum said he woke up at 9:15 a.m. and put his bags outside his hotel room door to be picked up by a team attendant. Then he went back into his room and fell asleep until 11:15 a.m., leaving him stuck in New York needing to find his own way to Canada.
"His bags made it to Toronto, but he didn't," Lakers coach Phil Jackson quipped.
Bynum had to retrieve his passport from the office of a travel company that the Lakers use for their road trips, go to the airport and then pay out of pocket for a $300 commercial flight, arriving around 8 p.m. on Saturday evening.
Bynum had to then fit his 7-foot, 285-pound frame into a coach seat because the flight didn't offer first-class seating.
"The plane was super small," Bynum said, before calling the flight "terrible."
"He'll be fined, but [he's not] in trouble," Jackson said.
"He's all right," Jackson said about any further discipline coming the way of his fifth-year center. "It's a rookie mistake, as you call it, even though he's not a rookie."
Dave McMenamin covers the Lakers for ESPNLosAngeles.com.