After dropping a 113-103 contest on their home floor to the Orlando Magic on Sunday night, the Los Angeles Lakers now sit at 8-9, in third place in a Pacific Division they've topped for five straight seasons, and in the uncomfortable position of not knowing quite how to fix what ails them. Injured star point guard Steve Nash is reportedly still 10 to 14 days away from returning to the fold, the relative age and size of Pau Gasol's pants is a matter of some debate, and Kobe Bryant is seemingly ready to start punching and kicking literally everyone, an approach to problem-solving that seems dubious, at best.

There's still plenty of time, of course, for Mike D'Antoni's crew to figure things out and for the Lakers to work themselves into the kind of inside-out/outside-in/everywhere-at-once offensive marvel that nobody wants to play come late spring; with the eventual reintegration of Nash into the lineup and better health and general comportment from (or, failing that, perhaps the trade of) Gasol, it seems a more reasonable bet that the Lakers will end the season having won more than half their games than that they'll finish up south of .500. Still, though, the Lakers went from a team that many (including us) expected to work as a no-doubt title favorite to a team whose championship chances — both now and going forward, considering the advancing ages of Bryant, Nash and Gasol — seem a bit shaky, to say the least.

This doesn't sound quite like what Dwight Howard signed up for when — at the end of a long, messy and very public divorce with the Magic that he later attributed to wanting everybody to love him — he made his way west in search of fame, fortune and, above all else, titles. And Howard — who's still set to hit free agency this summer — apparently intimated as much during a recent conversation with John Denton of the Magic's official website (emphasis mine):

[...] while he said it upset him having to divorce himself from the Magic and the Orlando fan base, Howard, 26, said his decision to leave ultimately came to being where he thought he had the best chance to win. And Howard, who can become an unrestricted free agent in July, even hinted that if he didn't think he could win in L.A., he would move on from Southern California in the summer. "You only get one shot. People might not ever understand that, but at the end of the day it's not their life. You can't let anybody else dictate how they want your life to be," he said. "I only have one shot to play and do something that I love. Not everybody is blessed and have an opportunity to do what they love. "So I want to do it the best that I can and I'm going to take everything in I can to get what I can out of the NBA. Which, for me, is winning a championship," he added. "So if I have to play on another team or do whatever I have to do to get one, that's my goal. This is my passion, so I'll continue to fight."

First off: In the interest of giving Howard the benefit of the doubt, it's important to note that we don't know the context in which he offered the remark to Denton. While I don't have any particular reason to doubt Denton's reporting, it is within the realm of possibility that what Howard meant to reference in using the phrase "if I have to play on another team" was his much-discussed exit from Orlando, a topic about which he was asked — again, and again, and again — in both the lead-up to and aftermath of Sunday night's game, rather than an eventual departure from Staples Center.

[Related: Kobe issues stern warning to Lakers teammates after losing again]

Now, that said: If Howard did mean what he said precisely as he said it and in the exact context in which Denton presents it, that would seem to pose a monstrous problem for a Lakers franchise that's clearly staked its claim on cementing Howard as its signature marquee star after the 34-year-old Bryant, 38-year-old Nash and 32-year-old Gasol exit the franchise.

View photos

Story continues