Personally, I’ve moved on from what Dwight Howard did last summer. What I want to know is if he has grown from two years of turbulence around him (turbulence largely caused by him), if he is healthy, if he can take the steps he needs to if he plans to lead Houston to a title. I will add this: It’s been just a few preseason games but he is moving well and playing with an edge we have not seen from him in a while.
Still, his past lingers.
He forced his way out of Orlando and burned bridges, only to land in Los Angeles where he didn’t get along with Kobe Bryant and was frustrated that management hired Mike D’Antoni over Phil Jackson (it’s the one thing Howard and Lakers fans largely agreed on).
Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel asked Howard about all those moves and his public perception, and Howard said he had to do what made him happy.
“Everybody’s saying I was a ‘coward’ for leaving [the Lakers], and I knew I was going to get that,” Howard said Tuesday. “But I think with the situation I had to do what was best for Dwight.
“I know when I wanted to leave Orlando, and I decided to stay, I wasn’t happy on the inside. I wanted to please everybody else and ended up hurting a lot of people by doing it the way I did. So, this time it’s like I had a second chance.
“I said, ‘You know what? People are going to hate me for whatever reason, so I can’t allow that to stop me from making my decision.’ I thought that my decision took a lot of guts because everybody’s saying, ‘How could you leave the Lakers and six billion fans?’ But I don’t care about being an outcast or about being somebody that may look bad. All I’ve got to do is win now, and I’m in the right situation.”
Howard went on to say he had “no regrets” about how things ultimately turned out in Orlando.
As I’ve said before, winning cures a lot of ills in American society. Howard’s image was bad, but so were the images of Kobe Bryant and LeBron James at points. I’m not sure that Kobe ever cared what others thought but LeBron was able to mature and move past it, then both led their respective teams to multiple titles. With that they won over the casual fans and earned begrudging respect from their critics.
It will be the same with Howard. Win and he can really sell he made the right basketball move, he can rehab that image. But to win he’s going to have to overcome the kind of adversity that he has shied away from in the past, he’s going to have to adapt his game to fit the team and not be about himself. Do that and the Rockets can win.
Do that and Howard will have showed he matured.
