ESPN

The prevailing thought surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers this offseason is that they are at the mercy of Dwight Howard’s decision to stay or go. That may be true, but there are many more decisions for general manager Mitch Kupchak and vice president of player personnel Jim Buss to make that will shape the direction of the franchise.

Even if Howard chooses to re-sign in L.A., which the Lakers have said is their hope and desire, there are still many more dominoes to fall.

In fact, the roster could very likely end up looking more like last season’s team if Howard leaves rather than if the All-Star center stays.

Here are four ways it could all play out, focusing on what L.A. does with its twin towers:

1. Lakers sign Howard and keep Pau Gasol

Also unofficially known as “The Kobe Bryant Plan” because it was the scenario Bryant called for to the media after his exit interview, this would involve the Lakers essentially going all-in for a second straight season with the belief that a hefty luxury tax fee would be worth it in order to win another championship before Bryant retires. While Bryant has dubbed his comeback from a torn Achilles in his left leg “The Last Chapter,” a source told ESPNLosAngeles.com’s Ramona Shelburne that Bryant wants "two more cracks at it to win seven NBA titles at least." Meaning that next season, which will be a physically and mentally taxing one for Bryant as he plays through injury, is unlikely to be his last. It also means that there could be less of an incentive for the Lakers' front office to pay so much to put that product on the floor, knowing that 2014-15 could really be the right time to make a push.

If the Lakers kept everything intact as it was last season, their payroll would be in the range of $100 million, which would bring an additional $80 million owed in a big, fat luxury tax check to the league at the end of the season. The only way it would be worth it is if the Lakers ended up lifting the Larry O’Brien trophy at the end of the season and tying the rival Boston Celtics with 17 rings.

The thing is, the Lakers -- as they were constructed last season -- hardly showed they were championship caliber. They may have finished the season 28-12 to make the playoffs, but they struggled against elite teams all season and furthermore, coach Mike D’Antoni never found an optimum way to showcase Howard and Gasol on the floor at the same time. In terms of priorities, the Lakers place far more value on the 27-year-old Howard than the soon to be 33-year-old Gasol. But it is still unclear how much priority Howard puts on remaining a Laker; it’s been reported he also has interest in Houston, Dallas, Golden State, Atlanta, Cleveland and the L.A. Clippers.

2. Lakers sign Howard and trade Gasol

This seemed like a pretty likely scenario as recently as a couple months ago. Howard was finally healthy and meshing with the Lakers and L.A. was winning games because of it, and there had been no hint from management that they would be willing to pay out the nose for a second straight season under the more punitive rules of the new collective bargaining agreement.

Gasol has been on the trade block, in essence, since December 2011 when the Lakers tried to ship him out in a three-team deal to acquire Chris Paul. While Gasol had a down year overall (career-lows of 13.7 points on 46.6 percent shooting while dipping to 8.6 rebounds per game), he should still demand some trade attention as a skilled 7-footer with championship experience who actually showed he still had some elite basketball left in him (three triple doubles in the last seven games of the season). Add in that Gasol’s $19.3 million contract is expiring, and L.A. is sure to find potential suitors.

One thing to be aware of, because the Lakers would be considered above the “tax apron” of the new CBA by re-signing Howard, they would not be able to receive a player via sign and trade. To put it more clearly, the Lakers could shop Gasol for a player already under contract (i.e. Kevin Love in Minnesota), but would not send him out for a player who is a free agent who would then sign with his former team and come to L.A. with a trade immediately afterward (i.e. Monta Ellis in Milwaukee).

This limits the pool of players the Lakers could pursue if they choose to trade Gasol (other than Ellis, there are big names like Andre Iguodala, Josh Smith and Paul out there) and could motivate the Lakers to hold on to him, or on the other end of the spectrum, maybe even use their one-time amnesty provision on him to get out from his contract if they don’t find any attractive deals out there.

3. Lakers trade Howard and keep Gasol

The Lakers have made it clear that it is not their intention to help push Howard out the door, but if Howard comes to them after July 1 and says he doesn’t want to stay, L.A. will have no choice but to consider it. While the Lakers can’t receive a player via a sign and trade because of their cap position, they can send out a player this way so they would be able to sign Howard to a four-year, $87.6 million deal and trade him (Howard can only receive the full five-year, $118 million if he stays a Laker). Then it becomes a question of what L.A. could get for him. Would the crosstown Clippers really give up both Blake Griffin and Eric Bledsoe? What if it was DeAndre Jordan and Bledsoe? If the Warriors make an offer centered around either Klay Thompson or Harrison Barnes, does the Lakers’ interest perk up? What about Omer Asik and Jeremy Lin from Houston?

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When word began to circulate Saturday that the Clippers have weighed offering Blake Griffin and Eric Bledsoe to their Staples Center co-tenants for Dwight Howard in a potential sign-and-trade swap after July 1, that naturally made folks wonder where the Lakers stand in their quest to re-sign Howard when he becomes an unrestricted free agent.

Here's the latest:

• The Lakers have had several discussions with Howard's representatives over the past few weeks and remain confident that they will ultimately keep him with the franchise, even as he's made it clear he will entertain other suitors.

• Yet the Lakers also, according to sources, have not completely ruled out the idea of a sign-and-trade if they come to find next month that Howard is determined to leave. Sources say they are indeed leaning against sign-and-trade scenarios because they'd rather bank the resultant cap space from Howard's departure for the summer of 2014. But sources say they've adopted a keep-all-options-open approach. So they'll at least listen to just about anything.

• One source with knowledge of the Lakers' thinking said Saturday that any suggestion they could not philosophically allow themselves to make a major trade with the Clippers was "overblown." If the Clippers do indeed decide to formally offer Griffin and Bledsoe in a sign-and-trade package for Howard, indications are that it's a proposal the Lakers will certainly not dismiss outright.

• The threat of the James Harden-led Rockets signing Howard away from L.A. is very real to the Lakers, sources said, which means the Lakers will eventually be getting a sign-and-trade pitch from Houston as well. The Rockets will have the cap space to sign Howard outright after the expected shedding of Thomas Robinson's contract, but sources say that the Rockets will certainly attempt to convince the Lakers to take in return Omer Asik and Jeremy Lin in a sign-and-trade deal for Howard, thus theoretically keeping alive the possibility that Houston could preserve its cap space to pursue Chris Paul and possibly pair Howard with Paul.

• Asik is a quality defensive anchor at roughly half Howard's price. And Lin had the greatest success of his career under Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni. But sources maintain that the Lakers' main priority this offseason -- besides re-signing Howard -- is getting their financial house in order. Which is why the overriding expectation persists that L.A. will rebuff sign-and-trade proposals to simply bank the cap space for the summer of 2014 if Howard bolts.

• Should Howard decide to leave the Lakers, sources said, several options have been discussed internally in Lakerland. Among them: The Lakers could simply let him walk, go into the season with Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Steve Nash as their centerpieces -- as they had planned in July 2012 before the trade for Howard materialized -- and focus on slicing into their luxury-tax bill.

Chris Paul and Dwight Howard have been in consistent contact recently about the possibility of becoming teammates next season, according to league sources.

Paul and Howard will be the biggest free agents on the market this summer, and their desire is to play together, the sources said.

"They would love to play together if somebody can make it happen," one of the sources said.

Full story here.

LOS ANGELES -- Kobe Bryant is still months away from returning to the court, but Los Angeles Lakers fans itching to see him up close and personal again will get their chance this summer.

Bryant will sit down with late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel for a one-night-only event at the Nokia Theatre at L.A. Live on Aug. 15.

The event, titled, "Kobe Up Close," will give fans an opportunity to watch a one-on-one interview live on stage with the proceeds from the event benefiting the Kobe & Vanessa Bryant Foundation and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Sports Spectacular.

"I'm excited to sit down with Jimmy," Bryant said in a statement. "And talk about what my fans have been wanting to hear and raise money to help eliminate homelessness in L.A."

The event will take place Thursday, Aug. 15 at the Nokia Theatre at L.A. Live at 8 p.m. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. on Thursday.

It has been nearly 20 years since Magic Johnson coached the Los Angeles Lakers for 16 games in the 1993-94 season*, but the Hall of Famer's opinions about his former franchise are as strong as ever.

Johnson, an analyst for ESPN appearing on KIA NBA Countdown during the NBA Finals, was on a conference call Wednesday with reporters to discuss the Finals and not surprisingly, the subject of the Lakers came up.

Below is a transcript of Johnson's latest thoughts on the purple and gold:

Q: What do you think of Dwight Howard, what is best for him?

JOHNSON: "I can't tell you what's best for him -- for Dwight Howard. I think that he'll probably make the best decision possible for him.

"I would say that he will probably enjoy playing for Kevin McHale, because Coach McHale, not only was he a Hall of Fame player – and I feel with Tim Duncan, the best power forwards that have ever played the game – but you have an emerging superstar and a guy that you can definitely play with James Harden.

"And I think that the other young players that they have, (Omer) Asik and (Jeremy) Lin, (Chandler) Parsons, those guys are right there too, with Dwight Howard, will take the next step as being one of the elite teams – one of the best four or five teams in the league and definitely will give themselves a chance to win a championship.

"So that's really where it is. The Lakers have to decide what they want to do. Dwight has to decide what he wants to do.

"I don't think you're going to have enough money for Chris (Paul) and Dwight. I think you're going to have to concentrate on one or the other probably, and I don't know if they want to play together; if one will decide to take lesser money. Now, one might decide to take lesser money and join forces there. But if they both command top dollar, that's going to be hard for Houston to pull off."

Q: The state of the Lakers, where you see them now and a year from now?

JOHNSON: "The state now is really just making a decision on Dwight Howard. I know that the Buss family, Jim Buss, are interested in sitting down and trying to strategize to find out, what do they want to do. And once they make that decision, then the next thing is Kobe Bryant, his return. Hopefully he can come back strong and healthy. And then they have to decide if they want to add somebody or not.

"But a year from now, with all the cap space that they will have, I think the Lakers will be able to sign two or three players and I think it puts them right in position to be a great franchise for the next five years if they make the right decisions and the right moves.

"So I'm excited about next summer for the Lakers. I think it's going to be tremendous. The Lakers just can't make dumb decisions right now to mess up that cap space."

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LOS ANGELES -- Anyone who watched Metta World Peace's epic press conference following Game 7 of the 2010 Finals knows just how entertaining the man can be with a microphone a TV cameras in front of him.

Now a few years later, with his NBA future up in the air, the Los Angeles Lakers forward is testing out what it would be like to transition to a broadcasting career once his playing days are done.

World Peace has embarked on a media whirlwind this summer, using the exposure on the likes of ESPN's "SportsNation," ESPN LA 710 radio's "Max & Marcellus Show," ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," Time Warner Cable SportsNet's "Access SportsNet: Lakers" and the NBC Sports Network's "The Crossover" with Michelle Beadle to promote his new children's book and to explore what it's like to be one of those doing the talking rather than be the one being talked about.

"I think I’m a different type of analyst because I’ve been involved in so many different situations where I can be judged and I’ve always tried to not judge someone," World Peace told ESPNLosAngeles.com in a telephone interview.

"At one time we probably shook hands and now I’m on TV talking about this player, he might not be able to take it. So, it’s my job to try to smooth it over and I always make sure I do that. That’s why I’m always having fun, because I don’t want the players to think that I’m killing them in the media."

While World Peace is willing to do wacky things like when he gorged on cupcakes during his TWC SportsNet appearance to keep things light, he certainly doesn't always sugarcoat his opinions.

When asked for his analysis of the current NBA Finals matchup between the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs, World Peace did not hold back.

"Mentally, the Spurs are strongest right now," World Peace said. "I think LeBron and (Chris) Bosh they want it to be given to them. I don't think they're taking it upon themselves like a (Michael) Jordan would have done."

Those opinions will get people to tune in. And there could be a need for a strong voice like World Peace's in the near future, as the NBA's most outspoken broadcaster, Charles Barkley, told SI.com back in November that he is contemplating leaving TNT in search of a new challenge.

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The Kobe Bryant memorabilia saga has ended with an apology from the Los Angeles Lakers guard's parents and a settlement that allows less than 10 percent of the items originally intended for sale to be auctioned.

Bryant and a company that was auctioning off the memorabilia reached a deal one week before the two sides were due to go to trial in New Jersey. The agreement allows the sale of six items, which Goldin Auctions president Ken Goldin told ESPN.com on Monday morning he is confident still can sell for more than $500,000 combined.

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Julius Erving said Wednesday that the Philadelphia 76ers received "damaged goods" when they acquired center Andrew Bynum.

Erving, speaking in Philadelphia before the premiere of "The Doctor," a documentary on his life, said teams always have to be wary when dealing with teams such as the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, who rarely get the short end of trades.

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Kobe Bryant shuffled into a conference room on the second floor of the Los Angeles Lakers' practice facility Monday with crutches under his arm and special Nike "Medical Mambas" on his feet and sat down for a near 30-minute interview with ESPNLosAngeles.com.

The discussion included a wide range of topics, including Bryant's thoughts on his rehab, Dwight Howard and Phil Jackson comparing him to Michael Jordan that have already been covered on the site.

Here's the best of the rest:

On tearing his Achilles tendon against Golden State ...

"I haven’t watched it, but just being in the moment, I knew what happened. I knew that was it. I was done. Walking back to the bench, I tried to figure out where I could put pressure on my foot to try to minimize the pain and just try to get through the these last two minutes of the game. I tried walking on my heel and I felt like that was going to work, believe it or not, for a little bit and then it kind of just feels like the tendon in your Achilles is just rolling up your calf and I thought, ‘You know what? Probably not a good idea, but I got to shoot these two free throws.’ These last two minutes, whatever it is left, all this work that we’ve done to get to this point, I got to step up and knock these down."

On where those free throws rank with the best shots of his career ...

"I’d say in terms of a moment, it’s right up there at the top because of what we went through as a team -- all the injuries we went through as a team. For me, I just felt like, just go up there and make them. You can’t let your team down. If you’re going to shoot them, you better make sure you make them. That’s where my focus was. And my teammates, I don’t think any of them really knew how severe it was. I looked at Steve. I think Steve was the one who committed the foul and I just looked at him like, ‘Dude, that’s it. I’m done.’"

On the size of his hands compared to Jordan's ...

"Michael was blessed with massive hands and Dr. J (Julius Erving) as well and some of these other players. I wasn’t. I have big hands, but (Jordan and Erving) can literally pick up the ball like an orange, so I’ve had to do things to strengthen my hands, strengthen my forearms to make sure I have that grip to be able to do it. They obviously had the natural capabilities to do it. I had to work to get that strength to be able to do it."

On which young players he appreciates ...

"There’s a few of them. I really like KD (Kevin Durant) quite a lot and what he does and how he plays and how he works. There are several other young players I really enjoy, (Russell) Westbrook being another one and they just both happen to be on the same team. James Harden, who is now in Houston and Carmelo Anthony, obviously, we’ve had a long relationship. But, just as a whole, players who get injured and go down: David Lee -- I felt it was my responsibility to reach out to him and make sure that he was alright. Harrison Barnes, he’s like a little brother to me. There’s guys in the league that I definitely look out for and try to steer them in the right direction."

On Tim Duncan ...

"There’s all this competition about who does this generation belong to, in terms of Tim and myself, and I enjoy hearing those conversations. I think what he’s done, I think he’s a great example for kids who grow up playing the game and understanding and learning the fundamentals and the work ethic.

"This last summer he’s done things with his body in terms of monitoring his diet and changing up some of his training and he’s come back in phenomenal shape at a lower weight and you can see the results. As a competitor, that’s what you want to see. People get caught up a lot in the results and this, that and the other, but I really can appreciate from afar what players do to get to that level."

On his level of admiration for Gregg Popovich ...

"Huge. I don’t understand how he does it. Just year after year, getting guys to buy into the system and plugging in the supporting cast around Manu (Ginobili), Tony (Parker) and Tim just year after year after year. We’ve been saying the Spurs have been done for how long now? As a Laker fan, we thought we put the nail in the coffin back in ’08. Like, that was it, and they just keep coming back."

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EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Stitches removed, out of a cast and with nearly six weeks of rehabilitation under his belt since surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon in his left leg, Kobe Bryant is still hoping for a return by the Los Angeles Lakers' 2013-14 season opener.

"I hope so," Bryant said in a sit-down interview with ESPNLosAngeles.com on Monday. "That's the challenge. With the tendon, there's really only but so much you can do. There's a certain amount of time that they deem necessary for the tendon to heal where you don't overstretch it and now you never get that spring back.

Full story »

Former Lakers coach Phil Jackson joined Mark Willard and Mychal Thompson on 710 ESPN on Thursday to discuss his new book, his coaching prospects and how his relationship with Lakers executive Jeanie Buss has affected his job opportunities.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Of the players in the post-Jordan era of the NBA, it’s a fair argument that Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant are two of the most accomplished individuals. While LeBron James will no doubt be a part of this discussion once his career is near its end, he has not yet built up a statistical resume quite as hefty as Duncan or Bryant.

Duncan (16 seasons) and Bryant (17) have about the same NBA service time, especially when you consider that Kobe was not much of an impact rookie in 1996-97 (7.6 PPG, 6 starts) while Duncan was the 1997-98 NBA Rookie of the Year, starting all 82 games and averaging 21.1 PPG and 11.9 RPG (keep in mind there were no 20-10 players in the entire NBA this season).

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LOS ANGELES -- For the first time in a long time, the Los Angeles Lakers are in a bit of a rut. For a franchise that has won 16 championships, a first-round playoff exit via sweep -- punctuating a three-year stretch in which the team failed to make it out of the second round -- is the equivalent of a band known for its epic encores ending a set after playing only a few songs.

How did the Lakers get here? Some occurrences were out of their control, of course. The litany of injuries that depleted the roster this past season couldn’t be anticipated. And the new collective bargaining agreement that went into effect before the 2011-12 lockout-shortened season has severely affected the way the Lakers go about their business.

That said, the Lakers’ management team hardly has been innocent bystanders over the past two years. As with any professional sports team, the Lakers have had to make major decision after major decision in order to maintain their current relevancy while simultaneously keeping an eye on the future. String together a handful of successful decisions in a row -- such as the way the Indiana Pacers picked up Tyler Hansbrough, Paul George and Lance Stephenson in consecutive drafts -- and it can take your franchise to new heights.

However, a couple of wrong moves can snowball, and instead of having that perennial success that once seemed preordained, you’re suddenly like the Bluth family on “Arrested Development.”

Here’s a look at the 10 major decisions the Lakers have made in the past two years that got them to where they are today.

1. Hiring Mike Brown

Following Phil Jackson’s retirement, the Lakers had a short list of candidates to replace him as head coach: Brown, Rick Adelman, Mike Dunleavy and Brian Shaw. The Lakers were blown away by Brown’s interview because of his preparedness and attention to detail, and chose the defense-minded coach who was almost the polar opposite of Jackson in terms of age and coaching style. Brown’s hasty dismissal the following season, just five games into the second year of a four-year contract, is grounds to play the “What if?” game.

What if Shaw had been handed the reins, continued to run the triangle offense and maintained strong relationships with Kobe Bryant, Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol? Maybe Bynum doesn’t have the breakout season he had under Brown’s post-up oriented system, but maybe Gasol’s career doesn’t sputter either. What if Adelman had come in with all that playoff experience from Portland and Sacramento under his belt and kept the group from skipping a beat?

2. Letting go of longtime support staff in conjunction with the lockout

Again, the lockout might have been out of the Lakers’ control, but how they responded to it wasn’t. The team parted with nearly 20 longtime employees in summer 2011 -- assistant general manager Ronnie Lester as well as a collection of experienced scouts among them -- and it was a very public glimpse for the outside world into the inner workings of the Lakers.

“You think of the Lakers and you think they are a great organization,” Lester told the L.A. Times. “But if you work inside the organization, it’s only a perception of being a great organization. It’s probably not a great organization, because great organizations don’t treat their personnel like they’ve done.”

The Lakers have since promoted Glenn Carraro to assistant GM and have hired new scouts, but the layoffs certainly took some of the Lakers’ luster -- and they could have angered the basketball gods, if you believe in that sort of thing.

3. Trading Derek Fisher

In the 43 games Fisher played in his final season in L.A., the veteran guard averaged 5.9 points and 3.3 assists while shooting 38.3 percent from the floor and 32.4 percent from 3-point territory. In the 53 regular-season games he has played with the Oklahoma City Thunder and Dallas Mavericks since then, Fisher has averaged 5.2 points and 1.4 assists on 34.2 percent shooting overall and 35.7 percent from deep, so it’s not like the Lakers missed out on the final glory days of Fisher’s career. They even got Jordan Hill out of the deal with the Houston Rockets, but moves aren’t always about what’s on paper.

By parting with Fisher, the Lakers got rid of a strong leadership presence in the locker room and also one of the few people on Earth with the power to sway Bryant. Teams across all sports have to cut ties with aging players on a regular basis, so the Fisher move wasn't unprecedented, but it was still jarring to say goodbye to a captain who was an integral part of five championships. In conjunction with losing Fisher, the Lakers acquired Ramon Sessions from Cleveland in a separate trade, thinking the 26-year-old could be their point guard of the future to contend with the NBA’s new wave of talent at that position.

4. Not retaining Ettore Messina and Quin Snyder

The Lakers’ five-game flameout in the second round of the 2012 playoffs against the Thunder was hard enough to swallow, but not long after the team learned it was also losing two of Brown’s top assistants in Messina and Snyder, who were going overseas to coach Messina’s former team, CSKA Moscow. The lucrative salary Messina was commanding to be a head coach once again in Europe made it more his decision than the Lakers’ to part ways. However, the departures of Messina and Snyder -- along with the reclassification of John Kuester to East Coast scout -- pretty much erased any rapport that Brown’s staff had developed with the team and ensured another season of new faces and ideologies for 2012-13.

5. Hiring Eddie Jordan to coach the Princeton offense

With Brown’s original staff gutted, he chose to go in a different direction by bringing in Jordan to run the Princeton offense. Brown was smart enough to get Bryant’s blessing on the move in Las Vegas during USA Basketball camp, before the Olympics and before Jordan officially came to the Lakers, but ultimately the offense proved to be too complicated for the team to run and too much of an ill fit for the pieces the Lakers would eventually acquire.

6. Not re-signing Ramon Sessions

After struggling in the playoffs against the Oklahoma City Thunder (averaging 6.8 points and 3.0 assists while shooting 35.3 percent, down from 12.7 and 6.2, respectively, on 47.9 percent shooting from the field in the regular season with L.A.), Sessions opted out of the final year of his contract in search of a multiyear commitment. The Lakers would have been amenable to bringing Sessions back had he opted in, but didn’t feel the young point guard had showed them enough to commit for the long term. Sessions received a two-year, $10 million deal from the Charlotte Bobcats and went on to average 14.4 points and 3.8 assists per game as an effective substitute off their bench.

7. Trading for Steve Nash

With Fisher gone and Sessions making it clear he was seeking a commitment the Lakers weren’t willing to give, the story goes that Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak called up agent Bill Duffy at the start of the official free-agency period and Duffy happened to be sitting next to Nash at the time. Kupchak was surprised to hear about Nash’s interest in becoming a Laker and so began the negotiation process, which ended with a three-year deal worth about $27 million for Nash and four draft picks -- two in the first round, two in the second -- going Phoenix’s way. The Lakers addressed two major needs -- experienced point guard play (especially after Sessions wilted in the postseason) and shooting -- but also went from a 37-year-old guard in Fisher to a 26-year-old in Sessions back to a 38-year-old in Nash (now 39). Nash went on to average 12.7 points and 6.7 assists while missing 32 games because of injuries in his first season in L.A. and was paid $8.9 million, nearly double what Sessions made (although Nash shot 49.7 percent for the Lakers compared to Sessions’ 40.8 percent for the Cats).

It was a swing-for-the-fences move by the Lakers, who ended up acquiring a Hall of Fame-bound point guard just seven months after being thwarted in their attempt to get Chris Paul. Kupchak and Lakers vice president of player personnel Jim Buss had no way of knowing that Nash would miss so many games because of a fracture in his left leg and nerve damage in his right hip and hamstring, but they knew quite clearly the risk involved in pursuing a guard who was approaching 40 years old.

8. Trading for Dwight Howard

No matter what Howard decides to do this offseason, L.A.’s management deserves credit for bringing him in for Andrew Bynum, who didn’t play a single game in 2012-13 because of his knees, rather than extending a long-term offer to Bynum after he was an All-Star for the first time in 2011-12. When healthy, Howard is right there with LeBron James as the most impactful two-way player in the game. Despite everything that went down in L.A. this season, he was the linchpin in helping the Lakers finish the season 28-12 over the final 40 games of the regular season.

The Lakers traded for Howard not knowing if he planned on signing a max extension to stay with them and figured a season wearing the purple and gold would persuade him to want to put down roots.

Even with the disappointment of Howard’s first season in L.A., it is hard to second-guess the trade made by the Lakers to acquire him. When you can add the best defensive player in the game, you have to do it. However, in adding yet another major contract to the books (to accompany Bryant, Gasol, Nash and Metta World Peace), the Lakers were fully committing to the plan to be a top-heavy team that relies on rookie deals and veteran minimum contracts to fill out the bulk of the roster outside of the mini midlevel exception. This strategy has its upside, clearly, but if any of the talent at the top gets injured or underperforms (which happened across the board this season) it puts severe stress on the rest of the Lakers to play above their heads to reach expectations, which isn’t a reasonable scenario and is a testament to why depth is so important in the NBA.

9. Firing Mike Brown

Hiring Brown was the tipping point to get the Lakers to the state they are in and you could argue that they fired him without giving him a chance to implement what he promised to do. After an 0-8 preseason and 1-4 start to the regular season, Brown was relieved of his duties as head coach. If Brown had been given the time to have Howard get healthy and have Nash return from his leg injury, maybe he would have gotten through to the group and had the success the Lakers were banking on when they hired him. There’s no way of knowing for sure, but by firing Brown the Lakers' management was admitting it made a major mistake on one of those major decisions.

10. Hiring Mike D’Antoni

The same decision that started the cycle two years ago –- hiring a coach –- was the last major move made by Lakers management to date. The front office claimed Mike D’Antoni was a better fit for the current personnel than Phil Jackson was, and didn’t await an answer from the 11-time championship-winning coach before moving forward and offering the job to the former Suns and New York Knicks front man. The Lakers were a far cry from “Showtime II” this past season. D’Antoni even admitted to ESPNLosAngeles.com late in the season that, “We're not running anything that I would normally run.”

Kupchak took that as D’Antoni being adaptable and endorsed the coach as having earned the right to keep his job for next season. While D’Antoni was able to maneuver through injuries and personality conflicts to help guide the Lakers into the playoffs, their season came to a screeching halt with an embarrassing 4-0 sweep to the Spurs once there.

So, that’s how the Lakers got here. The next major decision won’t be the franchise’s, but rather Howard’s to figure out if he wants to remain a Laker. Following that, there will be more franchise-altering choices to make -- whom to trade, whom to amnesty, whom to draft -- that could be either the start of building something in the right direction or the continuation of this difficult period in the team’s history.

If Phil Jackson was picking his own dream team, his squad would start with someone other than Michael Jordan.

"In my estimation, the guy that has to be there would be Bill Russell. He has won 11 championships as a player," Jackson said in an interview with Time. "That's really the idea of what excellence is, when you win championships.

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Mark Willard and Arash Markazi discuss the Lakers' options if Dwight Howard leaves via free agency.