(Readers: This column was originally published on May 23. Nice to have sages like Peter May contributing to the site – CS.)
It seems to me we are all missing the obvious here. Dwight Howard has absolutely no intention of re-signing with the Lakers. Why should he?
Have you looked at that roster?
Howard is entering what should be the prime of his career. He turns 28 in December. He is the only – and I mean ONLY – player on the Lakers’ roster under the age of 32 who you would even remotely want on your team, long term.
Jodie Meeks? Earl Clark? Please.
Forget for a moment Howard’s apparent unease with coach Mike D’Antoni. Forget for a moment the money he would be forfeiting by signing elsewhere. Forget for a moment that it’s – ta-da! – Los Angeles, with all the potential endorsement opportunities and glam time.
Focus instead on what Howard should (and most likely is) focusing on: Why should he spend the next five years of his career playing for a team that very soon – maybe even next season – is going to be in serious rebuilding mode?
Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol each have one more year left on their respective contracts. Steve Nash has two. Bryant, currently rehabbing a torn Achilles, could well hang ‘em up after next season; there are a lot of miles on that Mamba. Gasol is still a valued commodity, but he turns 33 in July and is about to be displaced by his younger brother as the family’s best player. Nash is still crafty, albeit injury-prone, and turns 40 next February.
You could try to sell Howard on sticking around for next season to see if the Lakers could do what they were unable to do this season – namely, be a factor in the Western Conference. But why would he even 
devote a nanosecond to such preposterous talk? The Lakers are going down – soon.
As Sheriff Ray Bledsoe famously noted in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid – “Your times is over and you’re gonna die bloody. And all you can do is choose where.”
Sure, the Lakers could talk wistfully about the summer of 2014 and all the cap room they could have, but cap room is just that. There are zero guarantees and, as Howard already knows, a player re-signing with his old team can make a lot more money. Or suppose Howard stays and the Lakers have a summer like the Bulls had in 2000, when they saved all their cap room for Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady and ended up with Ron Mercer and Brad Miller?
Peter May called it. So did 75% of the population on the planet.
Save the self-congratulatory sheridanhoops stuff. It’s almost as ridiculous as your assertion that Doc Rivers took a powder because Rajon Rondo was a big meanie.