The Howard Saga That Will Never End On a day when sports is being forced to consider how far it has gone off the deep end in the Penn State case, it is actually a bit of an antidote to be fixating on the Dwight Howard saga run amok. Because that story long ago reached the stage of pure silliness, a petulant superstar with the apparent maturity of a 6-year-old throwing a career temper tantrum that has now lasted longer than many N.B.A. careers. This made Wednesday's installment feel like a sort of Groundhog Day, when Magic General Manager Rob Hennigan came out of his hole, saw his shadow and doomed us to at least six more weeks of Howard trade talk. But when your other big sports news alternative involves child molesting and the corrupting powers of big-time college sports, debating where Howard falls on the schmo meter suddenly seems like a more pleasant pastime. You do have to hand it to Hennigan, just hired to steer this listing ship at the ripe old age of 30 - he is so young, the Magic neglected to mention his age in the article on their Web site when he was hired - that he has managed to make us hate him for not ending this soap opera before he has been on the job for a month. He could have given in to Howard's wishes and pulled the trigger on the deal with the Nets, but instead decided not to rush. You could argue, as Ken Berger does on CBSSports.com, that he lost a lot of leverage with the Nets out of the picture, but Dave D'Alessandro writes in The Star-Ledger that Hennigan understands there will always be options when trading a player as good as Howard, no matter how maddening he is. As Mike Bianchi writes in The Orlando Sentinel, he showed backbone by refusing to grant Howard his fondest wish. Of course, Howard's fondest wish seems to change daily, so there will be others. It does cost Howard the landing spot where people would have been least annoyed with him. The Nets, on their way to new digs in Brooklyn and hoping for a new era of relevance, would have considered him a prize and did try admirably hard to land the star center, Mike Vaccaro writes in The New York Post. Their failure was a boon to the Knicks, writes Mitch Lawrence in The Daily News, who prefer to maintain their dominance of the New York market on petulance. The Lakers remain a possibility, where Howard-as-diva wouldn't make anyone flinch in the land of manufactured dramas and Metta World Peace. But if Howard is upset over his fate, he has only himself to blame, writes Ian O'Connor on ESPN.com, because of his ridiculous faux loyalty maneuver of opting in for another year on his Magic contract. If you like contract squabbles and the N.F.L. is your league, you might send your attention to New Orleans, where the Saints and quarterback Drew Brees are arm-wrestling over about $10 million. If that isn't terribly appealing, there were a few things on television worth watching - and still watchable on video - including Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey showing David Letterman the mystery of the knuckleball and Pat Summitt accepting the Arthur Ashe Award at the ESPYs. And there is the pure video thrill of listening to these hockey highlights dubbed with soccer announcers' calls. Hey, never say we didn't offer an alternative to pondering Penn State's sins.