LOS ANGELES -- As Dwight Howard prepared to enter free agency in 2013, his representatives advised the Los Angeles Lakers that their best chance to retain his services would be if their pitch avoided references to the team's glorious past. Howard wanted to hear only what the Lakers could do for him going forward.
They might as well have asked the Lakers to shed their purple and gold colors. The Lakers are inextricably bound to their history. Actually, history isn't the right word. Every team has history, be it good or bad. Few teams in sports have lore, that distinct category the Lakers earned by virtue of their 16 championships and abundance of single-name-identifiable players who could account for an entire floor of the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Take their history out of the mix and the Lakers held no appeal for Howard. He opted for the Houston Rockets, a team with a star shooting guard in James Harden who is 11 years younger than Kobe Bryant.
When Howard returned to Los Angeles on the new season's opening night, the game not only served as a reminder that he made the right choice, but it also turned into a stark truth that the deficit between the Lakers' history and their future has never been greater.
The Lakers went heavy on the nostalgia Tuesday night. They celebrated the return of Showtime -- or one of that era's players, at least -- as Byron Scott manned the sideline for the first time as the Lakers' 25th head coach. They gave fans T-shirts with Scott's No. 4 on the back. Their intro video included an old clip of him dunking. The media guides had a portrait of Scott in a suit, with two images of him in his Lakers uniform in the background.
Bryant, the singular face of the franchise for the past 10 years, played for the first time since December. He wiggled his way free for 19 points in 29 minutes and showed that he can still be Kobe, to some degree. He isn't completely a part of the past yet.
But Bryant isn't in the Lakers' long-term plans. Rookie Julius Randle, the team's highest draft choice in 32 years, is the only player on the roster to whom the Lakers have rights in 2018-19. He and Nick Young are the only players on the books for 2016-17. Randle's storyline was the only one that held practical meaning for the Lakers. His development would indicate if they had a cornerstone going forward or if they would have to start completely anew and pursue a franchise foundation through other means.
The Lakers' future screeched to a halt midway through the fourth quarter Tuesday night when Randle broke the tibia in his right leg and was taken off the court on a stretcher.
It's not as if the present was any better. The scoreboard showed the Lakers trailed the Rockets by 27 points. Their defense had been as porous as advertised, allowing 62 points by halftime. Their offense lacks floor-spreading shooters. When Jeremy Lin is denied driving lanes, there isn't much left for them to try. Bryant can get his shot, but not easily. They sometimes forget about Carlos Boozer.
The evening's only enjoyable moment for Lakers fans was watching their beloved Bryant jaw with Howard after Howard caught him with an elbow -- and TV cameras subsequently caught Bryant calling Howard "soft." It was good theater, but it felt almost inappropriate to discuss after the injury to Randle that Scott called "heartbreaking."
Not to diminish Scott's emotions, but Randle's broken leg is of much greater consequence than the coach's broken heart. Bryant had said he was looking forward to watching Randle's growth. Instead, the remainder of the season will be about Randle's recovery. There won't be enough raw data for the Lakers to make an accurate assessment. They still don't know what they have in Randle.
The alternative is even worse: The Lakers do know what they have, and it's a fragile player. Randle has a screw in his right foot that was used to repair a broken fifth metatarsal bone in his senior year of high school. The injury didn't cause him to miss any games during his lone collegiate season at Kentucky, but there was concern around draft time and the Lakers sent Randle to a foot specialist over the summer to see if more surgery would be required. It wasn't at the time.
The tally doesn't bode well for Randle. He hasn't turned 20 and he has broken as many bones in his right lower limb as he has scored NBA points: two. He has yet to grab his first NBA rebound.
The Lakers had enough bad news in the preseason. Steve Nash was declared out for the season with lingering back and nerve problems, and Young is out until December with a torn ligament in his thumb. The Lakers couldn't make it through one full game in the regular season without losing their prized rookie.
Bryant, having just gone through the recovery process for a major injury himself, went over to Randle and offered some words of comfort. Then Bryant returned to the Lakers bench, sat down and shook his head in disbelief. It didn't make for as memorable a GIF as Bryant's epic face-palm-head-scratch from last season.
Yes, it seems as if even the Lakers' head shakes were better in the past.