Dwight Howard: Superman Has Turned into Villain He Hoped to Avoid

Dwight Howard is clueless. Like most people in life, he wants to be the good guy. He went as far as to anoint himself “Superman."

These days he is a lot closer to Lex Luthor than Superman.

Howard doesn’t understand the words he’s saying make him sound like some sort of politician at this point: hollow, not 100-percent true while being broad and generic enough to keep everybody in his corner. He is walking on thin ice that is cracking with every stupid comment he makes.

Everyone in the NBA knows he wants to be traded, as he constructed a wish list of teams he would like to be sent to. It used to just include the New Jersey Nets, LA Lakers and Dallas Mavericks, and now he added the Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls in the past week.

Every time he adds a team it’s another slap in the face to his 11 teammates that are stuck in some sort of NBA hell where they get criticized for not playing well as they watch Howard pack up his belongings one cape at a time.

After blowing a 27-point lead to the Celtics, Howard declared things “have to change” right after adding Boston to his wish list. He is trying to be a leader at a time when he's going behind everybody’s backs and flirting with any other attractive team that could get him out of Orlando.

The Magic have lost five of six games after an 11-4 start and the wheels are completely coming off.  The offensive woes have been beyond horrific. During this disastrous run, the Magic have scored 56, 67 and 69 points.

Not even the Charlotte Bobcats experience that sort of offensive futility.

Howard pretends like this is his teammates fault, that it’s them who need to change the way they are approaching the game. Just listen to Howard’s answer when asked if the trade rumors have affected him: "It hasn’t affected me. I’ve been playing hard every night. Everybody else has to have that same attitude."

That sounds just a little different than how teammate J.J. Redick feels about the constant trade talk.

"I’ve said since the beginning: As long as he’s here, it will be a distraction because it’s all anybody talks about when they talk about our team," he said. "We don’t hear it? Of course we do."

The Magic are never going to get out of the first round with the trade rumors sucking the life from the franchise and the sooner they grant his wish the better. The NBA lockout did nothing to change the Howard’s, Carmelo Anthony’s and LeBron James’ of the game, and the sooner this nightmare is over the faster the franchise can begin to rebuild. Just ask the Denver Nuggets.

His fans and teammates have been nothing but supportive of him ever since entering the league as a raw 18-year-old back in 2004.

This is his way of repaying their loyalty.

The only definitive conclusion we can take from this ugly saga is that Howard is no longer a hero. He is now just another top-10 player that held his team hostage until he got what he wanted.

That’s not Superman at work, it’s Lex Luthor.