Sources told ESPN's Ramona Shelburne and Marc Stein that a potentially delayed power shift in Lakers nation helped lead Howard to the Houston Rockets:
The Lakers, almost from the moment Howard arrived in August 2012, had gone to great lengths to assure the 27-year-old that they saw him as the future face of the franchise and that the torch would be passed from Bryant to him in short order.
But with Bryant saying publicly just a week before free agency that he was thinking of playing at least two or three more seasons, it was hard for Howard to envision when he would assume that role, sources said.
The ESPN report goes on to state that Howard's representatives brought up the possibility of cutting ties with Kobe Bryant in the offseason, saying "Howard's camp at one point asked the Lakers whether they were at least considering releasing Bryant through the league's amnesty provision."
Howard had envisioned a potential partnership with Chris Paul over the summer, but the cash-strapped Lakers couldn't make that happen without some clever manipulation of their financial books.
Those possible moves were either stymied by potential trade partners or overruled by the Lakers themselves:
Amnestying Bryant and shopping Pau Gasol and Steve Nash to teams with salary-cap space would have allowed the Lakers to try to recruit Paul in free agency. But the Lakers, sources said, made it clear the prospect of releasing Bryant via amnesty or simply trying to lay out a finite timetable on the end of his career with the franchise was not under consideration, believing those decisions should and would be made by Bryant.
The possibility of the Lakers shedding Bryant's $30 million-plus salary through the amnesty clause was ta...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Los Angeles Lakers
