Beg your pardon?

On the side of the Staples Center, out on Hollywood Boulevard and at key points elsewhere in Los Angeles these days, you can see "STAY" and the hash tag #STAYD12 emblazoned on billboards with Dwight Howard’s soaring likeness.

Is this what it has come to for the Lakers?

Has a once-proud franchise been reduced to begging on the streets of its city?

Because these beseeching attempts to hold onto Howard, their wavering center, sure smack of a desperation not usually associated with one of the NBA’s most storied franchises.

The Lakers didn’t have to beg on this scale to get much better centers, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O’Neal among them, and shouldn’t be reduced to that now.

They didn’t prostrate themselves to get Kobe Bryant, the face of the franchise, to stay.

Why, in the name of George Mikan, would they start now?

After the sad effort in the first-round playoff elimination, if anybody is to do some imploring, it should be the other way around. Howard should be the one on his knees asking "please, please, let me stay." Especially with the possibility of earning as much as $118 million by hanging around.

He was the one, you’ll recall, who checked out when the Lakers needed him most.

Instead of lifting the Lakers, he left them with time left in the third quarter after two nonsensical technical fouls in the fourth game, helping San Antonio inflict the first opening-round playoff sweep of the Lakers since 1967.

History suggests Howard has an ego that requires much massaging. With free agency looming, that apparently means public and social media romancing, too. Come Monday, Howard can entertain offers from other teams, with Dallas, Houston and Atlanta most prominently mentioned among them. Then, come July 10, he can decide his course of action.

The Lakers are the purple and the proud. They have won 16 NBA championships. They have put 24 players into the Hall of Fame. Once upon a time that and the money were enough.

If Howard really wants to forego the $30 million more the Lakers can pay him than anybody else can, or is determined to flee Mike D’Antoni’s offense and Bryant’s competing presence, then it is hard to see how a string of billboards is going to turn the tide.

Of course, Doc Rivers’ heralded arrival in town from Boston as the head coach of the Clippers has undoubtedly exacerbated the Lakers’ desperation. With him, the Clippers are bound to become a more formidable force in a building and town long ruled by the Lakers.

As such, the Lakers need to take a long look at their future, especially the looming Bryant-less portion.

It is hard to imagine Howard is their answer. Or that this is the way the Lakers, of all people, really want to go about addressing that future. Begging on their knees.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.