If Dwight Howard leaves the Orlando Magic, be it by trade or free agency, the team prefers to stay competitive rather than rebuild, Marc Stein of ESPN.com reported Wednesday. The Magic "would not hold out for youth and draft picks as the league-owned New Orleans Hornets were ordered to do in the Chris Paul sweepstakes." Instead, Stein says, citing sources, want any team trading for Howard to send "multiple established veterans who can keep the team competitive." The Atlanta Hawks offered five-time All-Star swingman Joe Johnson and gadget forward Josh Smith for Orlando's future Hall-of-Fame center and "felt like they were making some semblance of progress before the Magic shut down talks," Stein says. That's the sort of package Orlando might be seeking.

Reading Stein's report reminded me of the refrain Otis Smith, Orlando's President of Basketball Operations, has used throughout the Howard trade drama. "Our objective is to win a title and protect this franchise," he said at a press conference in early December. He repeated that sentiment just moments later, saying "We're gonna continue to put the best team on the floor to win an NBA title."

Smith's goal, in other words, is to do what's best for the Orlando Magic, with Howard or without. Keeping Howard is, obviously, what's best. But what's the right course of action if Howard leaves? The mission--do what's best--stays the same. At issue is what precisely "best" means.

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Dwight Howard's pending free agency and his still-standing trade request figure to dominate the headlines through much of the Orlando Magic's season; the outcomes of the games, I suspect, will be almost incidental. He, his teammates, and his coach will face the same questions about those topics, phrased several different ways, in each city they visit.

And indeed those stories have shaped the tenor in discussions of the Magic's offseason and preseason; Howard can't even have a bad game--five points in Orlando's 33-point shellacking at the hands of the Miami Heat--without some folks wondering if he's simply mailing it in, angling for a trade sooner rather than later.

Which is all to say perhaps the discussion of Orlando's offseason has centered too much on Howard. Other questions remain, but my chief concerns are these: in what ways is this Magic team different from the one that was a silly Larry Drew coaching decision--benching All-Star center Al Horford for almost the entire first half of Game 2--from being swept out of the first round of the playoffs? Has Otis Smith adequately addressed the weaknesses of the 2010/11 Magic roster?

The answers are "not many" and "no, emphatically," respectively.

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Dwight Howard has expressed his displeasure with the way the Orlando Magic used Gilbert Arenas last season. "I just felt like he didn’t get the opportunity to play his style but also play with me," Orlando's franchise cornerstone told Jorge Sierra of HoopsHype.com. "I think he needed to. I think he got a couple of opportunities to do it in the playoffs, but it was kind of too late."

Arenas, who finished no worse than seventh in the league in scoring for three straight seasons earlier in his career, arrived in Orlando via a trade with the Washington Wizards last December. Brought in to bolster Orlando's offense, he faltered, shooting 34.4 percent from the field while shooting more often, per minute, than every Magic player apart from Howard. Though he showed aptitude in pushing the pace in transition and running the high pick-and-roll, Arenas did precious little else well, committing too many turnovers and proving to be a liability on defense.

Yet perhaps he, more than any Magic player other than Howard, might be the key to Orlando's future, according to not a few analysts, as well as Magic fans who've tweeted me. Orlando's biggest issue going forward is its lack of dynamic perimeter scoring, which Arenas can provide in spurts if healthy. Indeed, in his last injury-free season, Arenas averaged 28.4 points, good for third in the league. That's the good news. The bad is that it was five years ago, in the 2006/07 campaign. That was the year, you may recall, wherein Darko Milicic was a rotation player for Orlando. Yup.

What are we to make of Howard's claims? And can Arenas return to a form approximating his former self?

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On Memorial Day, Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard made clear his intentions to stay with the only club for which he's played in his seven NBA seasons, telling Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel, "I'm not trying to run behind nobody like Shaq or be behind somebody else [...] I want to start my own path and I want people to follow my path and not just follow somebody else's path. I want to have my own path, and I want to start that here in Orlando." The four-time All-Star, who can become a free agent next summer, battled speculation about his future throughout last season, which ended in a disappointing first-round playoff loss, and has continued to do so throughout this summer.

Howard's comments don't change the fundamentals of his situation, which are these:

• He's under contract with Orlando for $18.1 million this coming season.

• By exercising the Early Termination Option in his contract, Howard can forego the 2012/12 season, at $19.5 million, and become an unrestricted free agent.

• The best way to end the speculation about his free-agent future is to sign a two-year extension with Orlando--which he can do up until the July 1st expiration of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.

• Such an extension would tack two years onto his deal and nullify his current Early Termination Option, keeping him in Orlando through at least 2013/14; he'd presumably want another Early Termination Option for the 2014/15 season.

No, Howard's remarks instead alter the context in which we'll view whatever decision he makes next summer. By invoking Shaquille O'Neal's departure in 1996, which left the Magic in a lurch until Howard's arrival in 2004, Howard has clearly acknowledged the impact a similar choice on his part would have on the fans, this city, and the Magic organization, to say nothing of his legacy.

And while Howard will surely join the Hall of Fame one day, and will enjoy near-universal acclaim for his greatness as a player regardless of how many teams employ him during his career, it's true that we'll regard him differently if he bounces around the league. Fairly or not, we regard superstars more highly if they spend their entire career with one organization: think Dirk Nowitzki with the Dallas Mavericks, Paul Pierce with the Boston Celtics, and Kobe Bryant with the Los Angeles Lakers, to name but a few more obvious examples.

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Forgive me for making my second baseball analogy in less than a week, but there's an old saying in that sport that goes something like, "momentum is tomorrow's starting pitcher." The point being that any "momentum" gained with a big win, or a series of big wins, can evaporate the next day, or whenever the next game is played, if whoever takes the hill doesn't have his best stuff and subsequently gets shelled.

Jamal Crawford is the Atlanta Hawks' "tomorrow's starting pitcher." The veteran combo guard has put together three fantastic performances against the Orlando Magic in helping underdog Atlanta secure a 2-1 series lead. Crawford has put in 71 points in 91 minutes and boasts a True Shooting Percentage of 59.9, an elite figure for any player, let alone a volume-shooting, perimeter-oriented wing.

And as far as momentum goes, he has all of it. He capped off Friday's Hawks win by banking in a deep, heavily contested three-pointer, at the shot-clock buzzer, with 5.7 seconds to play, at home, to give his team a 2-1 series lead against a club which swept his by 25.3 points in last year's playoffs.

Yeah, there are a number of factors working in Atlanta's favor right now, especially defensively. Despite the Magic's well-documented offensive struggles against the Hawks, who seem to have figured them out, they've been competitive in every game. For Atlanta to continue apace and take a commanding 3-1 lead in this series, Crawford has to continue bombing away. Efficiently. And you'll forgive my skepticism that he can keep it up.

He's a career 35 percent three-point shooter who connected on 34.1 percent of his threes this season; in this series, he's 10-of-17 (58.8 percent) from deep. Inside the arc, he's far less successful, at 12-of-33 (36.4 percent).

Simply put, his track record strongly suggests he can't keep this torrid pace up for much longer. And if he tails off in Game Four and Orlando wins? Suddenly, the Magic regain homecourt advantage.

And, you know, momentum. For whatever it's worth.

Yesterday evening, I took to Twitter and wrote the following comment regarding Dwight Howard and a certain popular ESPN columnist whose initials are B.S.:

Folks, it's not news that Bill Simmons is astoundingly wrong about Dwight Howard.

That passive-aggressive tweet is in reference to Simmons' latest column for the four-letter network in which he ranks NBA teams. He uses his section on the Orlando Magic to explain why he thinks Howard is holding back, and is therefore holding the Magic back.

And so here I am, at 7 AM, on no sleep, pounding this column away on the keyboard less than 12 hours removed from saying Simmons being wrong about Howard isn't newsworthy. Because I can't help myself and there's nobody awake to help me.

I hate blockquoting more than three sentences from any piece, though I'll sometimes use four or five if necessary. Please understand that Simmons' argument spans several paragraphs, but because I wouldn't want another writer just copy/pasting my work into a blog post, I'm not going to do that here. Or ever. Again, the following is only a part of his argument, and I don't claim it to stand for the whole. At any rate:

You're telling me Howard's 23.1 points, 14.1 rebounds, 2.4 blocks and 26.1 PER is the best he can do? No way.

Well, yeah, he can do better. My issue is that Simmons can too.

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Readers of this blog reacted with indifference, or positivity, when I posted the news yesterday that the Orlando Magic's Gilbert Arenas (flu-like symptoms) wouldn't travel with the team to Toronto for tonight's game against the Raptors. "I'd rather have Lewis not playing for 2 years than Arenas playing for 3," said eltharion_doa. Fellow commenter cgsimone agreed, writing: "I do approve of Gilbert Arenas when he’s not playing. It helps immensely." My guess is that Gilbert draws more ire from fans of his team than any other backup point guard in the NBA. And no, I haven't forgotten about Jonny Flynn.

I understand Magic fans' distaste for Arenas, to a degree. His individual statistics are staggeringly awful: 7.7 points in 21.4 minutes, 33.5 percent shooting, just 3.4 assists to 2.2 turnovers. Despite having the lowest field-goal percentage on the team, he takes more shots, per-minute, than everyone but Dwight Howard.

You can see how all these deficiencies in his game, especially relative to his $61 million contract, might aggravate Magic fans. Off the court, some fans have expressed displeasure with Arenas' launching of an apparel line mid-season and his saying "I sit so much [at home]; it's all I do." The idea is that he should spend more time rehabbing his knee and less time watching 24 on his iPad, I suppose.

After three knee operations, nobody expected the Gilbert Orlando acquired in December to resemble the Gilbert who averaged 29.3 points and 6.1 assists five years ago. By the same token, nobody expected him to play like a destitute man's Jannero Pargo, either.

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Vince Carter stands on the right wing, elbow extended, just beyond the free-throw line. The Phoenix Suns' playoff hopes hinge upon this game against the Dallas Mavericks; a win keeps them alive, while a loss puts them three games behind eighth-place Memphis with just 10 to play. As Aaron Brooks surveys the defense from the top of the arc, with a live dribble, Carter remains stationary.

Brooks finally calls for Marcin Gortat to set a high screen for him. As Brooks dribbles to his left around Gortat, Carter cuts from his spot on the right wing directly to the left elbow. "Cut" might not be the best word, really; it's closer to a jog. Brooks continues to noodle around with his dribble, and Carter takes a few casual steps back to the three-point line. Shawn Marion, the defender closest to Vince, pays him no mind.

Now standing in the left short-corner, Brooks rifles a cross-court pass to Grant Hill, who cut from the right corner to the pinch-post to receive the past. The third ex-Magic player on the court for Phoenix short-rims a jumper after backing Jason Kidd up with a few dribbles. As the ball leaves Hill's hands, Carter trots into rebounding position and comes away with the offensive board just on the right side of the rim, on the baseline. Dallas center Tyson Chandler turns his head away from Gortat, his man, to apply some pressure to Carter. Vince recognizes Gortat is now open, but his bounce pass through traffic is too low for Gortat to catch. "Carter got the rebound and threw it away!" says ESPN play-by-play man Dave Pasch as Jason Terry scoops up the loose ball and busts tail up the court.

Brooks intentionally fouls Terry to halt the fast break. Steve Nash checks in for Carter immediately. The game is knotted at 79. Dallas goes on to win, 91-83, thanks to tight defense and timely three-point shooting by Jason Kidd.

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