The defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers came into this NBA season with high hopes of repeating as NBA champs as they were able to keep their championship team for last season relatively intact with their only real loss being Trevor Ariza signing with the Houston Rockets.

Fortunately, the loss of Ariza hasn’t really been felt this season due to the signing of defensive specialist Ron Artest who has brought a much needed toughness to the Los Angeles Lakers this season in their title defense.

Even though the Lakers have the best record in the NBA at 30-9, they have struggled with some nagging injuries to three of their best players on the team with Pau Gasol’s hamstring, Ron Artest’s concussion and Kobe Bryant’s broken finger and back spasms.

Despite all their injury problems, the Los Angeles Lakers are still arguably the best team in the league right now as we near the mid season mark in the NBA.

With the best record in the NBA and a team that looks better than ever when healthy, you would figure they would be content with their squad, but apparently that isn’t the case as the Lakers could be shopping their most promising young player in center Andrew Bynum.

One position in the NBA that is the hardest to fill with a superstar caliber player these days is the center position as more and more players and teams seem to be leaning towards running their team through the guard position. Back in the day, when a team has a dominant center, that team is a perennial super power in the NBA.

The Boston Celtics had it back in the day with Bill Russell and have it now with Kevin Garnett in the paint. The Houston Rockets had it with Hakeem Olajuwon and the Dream Shake. The San Antonio Spurs have had it with the Twin Towers in Tim Duncan and David Robinson. The Los Angeles Lakers have had a dominant center multiple times from George Mikan to Kareem Abdul-Jabaar to Shaquille O’Neal to Andrew Bynum.

Needless to say, all these teams with dominant big men have all won one or more NBA titles.

It remains to be seen whether or not Andrew Bynum will be one of the dominant centers, but it would be hard to argue that he couldn’t end up being one of the best centers in the league.

Despite all that being said, the Lakers have been rumored to be talking with the Toronto Raptors about a trade that would bring forward Chris Bosh to Los Angeles in exchange for Andrew Bynum.