Lakers aren't their usual selves as they come to Target Center

Ever-faithful Los Angeles Lakers fans will arrive at Target Center Wednesday night for their team's final visit this season sporting jerseys bearing Kobe Bryant's name and number as well as those belonging to the franchise's other stars down through the generations. ¶ But it won't be the same. ¶ It hasn't been for some time for the NBA's former glamour franchise, which now has become something of an afterthought back home in L.A. to the rival Clippers. ¶ Wednesday's game with the Timberwolves is pertinent only for its draft-lottery implications: The Lakers lead the Wolves in the win column by two, 18-16. ¶ So what has brought the 16-time champion Lakers to this place, where Bryant is the team's only remaining superstar and he's out for the season injured?

1. Father Time Always Wins

Time catches up with everybody, even Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.

There are many other reasons — some of them listed below — for the Lakers' fall from the mountaintop but none more important than Bryant coming to terms with an opponent that nobody, not even the great Black Mamba, can beat.

He has played just 41 games the past two seasons because of injury. His season ended this year because of January surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff.

At age 36, he vows a return next season, the final year of a huge contract extension that will pay him a $25 million salary. But his absence since he tore his Achilles late in the season two years ago has left the Lakers trying to cobble together a roster with chewing gum and baling wire.

They've done so by turning toward a highly paid temp (Jeremy Lin and his $14.9 million salary), Timberwolves castoffs (Wesley Johnson and Wayne Ellington) and a cost-efficient veteran (Carlos Boozer) while waiting for free agents they're still waiting to come aboard. It hasn't helped any either that last summer's No. 7 overall draft pick Julius Randle's season ended on October's opening night when he broke his leg.

Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss died in February 2013 and in so many ways things have not been the same without the man who personified the franchise's success and made it "Showtime" among Hollywood's brightest lights for more than 30 years.

The Lakers won 10 of the franchise's 16 titles in those 30-plus years, when Buss was able to bring superstar after superstar — from Magic Johnson to James Worthy, from Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal to Pau Gasol, Steve Nash and Dwight Howard — to Los Angeles. The rare notable exception: The NBA's reversal of a trade that would have brought Chris Paul to L.A.'s first team in 2011.

Heirs Jim and Jeanie Buss have run operations in the two years since his death. In that time, the Lakers have accelerated a descent from the NBA's glamour franchise to just another dysfunctional lottery-bound team that pursued star Carmelo Anthony and tried to keep free-agent Gasol last summer, without success.

3. Moving On Again Without All That Zen

Phil Jackson walked away into retirement in 2011, with 11 NBA titles won as a coach with Chicago and the Lakers. Nearly five years later, they are on their third replacement for the guy they called the Zen Master.

4. The Failed Steve Nash Experiment

The Lakers traded two future first-round and two second-round picks and signed Nash to a three-year, $28 million contract in the summer of 2012 hoping to get the last bit of greatness out of an aging point guard who played in eight All-Star games and twice won league MVP.

The same summer the Lakers acquired Dwight Howard, both seemingly good ideas,` but they sure didn't work out that way.

Nash played just 65 games in those three seasons because of back and leg injuries, and the Lakers made the playoffs just once that time, losing in the first round, before Nash announced his retirement last weekend at age 41.

Nash is now retired, but the Lakers still owe their own top-five protected draft pick this summer.

Superman forced his way out of Orlando and to the Lakers with an August 2012 trade, supposedly ending an unhappy saga that scribes called a Dwightmare.

But the All-Star center's fleeting time in Los Angeles wasn't much happier. He played just one season in Los Angeles — 76 regular-season games and four playoff games, to be precise — after the Lakers gave up big man Andrew Bynum and conditional first- and second-round picks for him.

Bryant presumably was going to teach him the way of champions, but the two never found their way together. Bryant tore his Achilles' tendon late in that season and Howard left in the summer, signing with Houston after he was wooed by four other teams including the Lakers.