It's a sad day for the LA Lakers

ESPN's Chris Broussard is reporting that it's very unlikely Dwight Howard will choose to re-sign with Los Angeles.  But that isn't what my headline is referring to.  The reason it's a sad day for the Lakers is because they have decided to put up billboards trying to convince Howard to stay:

Come on LA.  Are you serious?  You're the freaking Lakers.  The second most successful franchise in league history.  A perennial #1 destination choice for all NBA free agents.  You're not supposed to beg players to stay, they're supposed to come chasing after you.  Billboards like this are for loser teams/cities like Cleveland.  Not LA.  

To see the Lakers acting like a pathetic boy/girlfriend trying to get back together with their ex who just dumped them is pretty shocking; especially over Howard, who greatly underachieved in his only year with the team (not to mention how overrated I've always thought he was; read this and this from 3 days apart a year and a half ago).  If the Celtics ever did something like this I'd probably be so embarrassed I'd have to cancel my season tickets.

6/28 UPDATE: Here's what a Laker fan friend of mine had to say about this:

"I'd say you pretty much nailed how I feel about it. This is a franchise that doesn't hang banners for division and conference championships because it is beneath them. That doesn't retire numbers for players unless they go to the Hall of Fame, so key guys from championship teams like Robert Horry, Derek Fisher, Byron Scott, and Michael Cooper don't make the cut. The Lakers didn't even do this for Kobe, who is, you know, Kobe. Most Laker fans I know would rather see Dwight leave. Nobody I know thinks of Howard as a championship cornerstone. A year or two of mediocrity between the end of the Kobe era and the start of the next star's era (James? Durant? Irving? Wiggins? Unrealistic, maybe, but Jerry Buss and Jerry West, using the advantage of being "the Lakers", made these things happen) is acceptable; becoming just another franchise is not. How Jim Buss fails to understand what his father built, I'll never know. I do know that Kobe's going to retire, and that somebody is going to offer Mitch Kupchak a GM job where he's not being constantly undercut (frankly, I can't believe he hasn't jumped ship yet), and there's not a lot of hope for what comes next."

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