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For Howard, the trade deadline comes on Thursday and rivals are still poking at the Lakers, understanding fully that Howard is miserable. When teams call to talk trade, they say, the Lakers' private message has been consistent with the public one: Howard isn't available, general manager Mitch Kupchak tells them.

When suggestions surfaced over the weekend that the Lakers had engaged in trade talks, Kupchak delivered word directly to Howard that he should pay it no mind. "They're too arrogant to move him now, even if Dwight asked for it," one rival GM said. "They're the Lakers, and they'll dare you to walk away in July. And if I was them, I would, too."


When asked about the possibility of the Lakers moving Howard at the deadline, Kobe Bryant was devastatingly indifferent. "I don't know what they're going to do," he said Sunday. "At this point, it doesn't matter."Rest assured, Bryant and Howard didn't spend this All-Star weekend bonding the way Bryant and Andrew Bynum did a year ago. Bryant doesn't ask Howard about his future, nor does he sell him on re-signing. The trade deadline is Thursday, but the organization still hasn't come to Howard with that ultimate question: Come July, are you in or out?

Howard has grown to believe that winning has to be the premium priority of his free-agent decision, **** say. He promises to take a long look this summer – study the Lakers' present and future against those options available to him in free agency, including sign-and-trades – and make a choice weighed less in marketing potential and geography, and more in proper personnel for sustainable success.

In Buss' perfect world, the team's majority owners would now become his six children, led by Jimmy and Jeanie Buss. Except Jimmy and Jeanie have vastly different philosophies, and have barely communicated since Jimmy botched the attempted re-hiring this season of Phil Jackson, who happens to be Jeanie's fiancé.

There is talk that the six children will be unable to find common ground and that they will wind up selling the team. Here's hoping that doesn't happen. Here's hoping they can work together to continue their father's legacy.

It is a legacy of family, a legacy of success, a legacy of consistently committed love for the city of Los Angeles, who loved him back, and will miss him dearly.