Dwight Howard: His Back and Forth Was the Most Selfish Display in NBA History

Professional athletes today are marveled at for their on-court or on-field prowess, but routinely scrutinized for their selfishness and prima donna attitudes. The egotism of many present-day sports stars is incomprehensible as well as a major turnoff to the general public.  

Hearing professional athletes who are getting paid millions of dollars whine about their contracts and other material things is not something blue-collar Americans want to hear.  

This brings us to the biggest diva of them all: Dwight Howard.

For over a year now, the NBA’s premier big man has taken the league on a roller coaster ride of emotion and indecision. He has publicly gone back and forth on whether or not he wanted to stay on his current team, the Orlando Magic, or be traded to another squad.

The soap opera that was Dwight Howard over the past year has hurt the progress of numerous NBA franchises as well as the entire league.  

The first team that Howard negatively affected through his indecision was the Orlando Magic. Having your star player publicly list teams he would want to be traded to is not something franchises enjoy dealing with.

A team’s best player is the guy everyone on the team follows and leans on, and having your star express his desire to jump ship deters the togetherness and progress of the entire franchise.

The Magic were not willing to make any major free-agent signings or trades to improve their roster because they weren’t sure if the guy they were trying to build around was going to be there long-term.

Howard finally told the team he was staying at least until the end of next season, but this announcement came just hours before the trade deadline, giving the team no opportunity to improve their roster.

How can the Magic ever fully trust Howard again after what he put them through? Think of a husband who tells his wife he wants a divorce, tells her different women he’d like to be with instead of her, but hours before he’s set to sign the divorce papers, he tells her he wants to stay and work things out.

That in a nutshell is what Howard did to the Magic. It’s going to be extremely difficult for the team to ever regain trust that Howard is all-in with the franchise.

The Howard saga also hurt other teams who were looking to acquire the three-time defending defensive player of the year. The team whose progress was deterred the most was the New Jersey Nets.

The Nets are set to move to Brooklyn next season and are in dire need of improving their team for the opening of their new arena. The franchise really needs to build interest in order to assemble a strong fanbase in Brooklyn.

The Nets were under the impression that Howard wanted to be traded from Orlando, and they were among the teams in the running for the star center.

The Nets were all-in on getting Howard no matter what the cost. Last season, they traded draft picks and talented young pieces away for Deron Williams, hoping that they would be able to acquire Howard as well.

They knew that Williams would be a free agent in 2012, but had faith due to Howard’s apparent desire to leave Orlando that they could unite the two stars.

Now, Howard has decided to remain in Orlando for another season, and it looks certain that Deron Williams will be gone at the end of the season. The team will be forced to move to Brooklyn with the fragile and unproven Brook Lopez as their headliner.

Finally, the league as a whole has been negatively impacted by this situation. Howard held the Magic hostage for over a year, not giving them any straight answer as to whether he wanted to stay or leave. He publicly threw his team under the bus on numerous occasions and had other teams change their rosters to put themselves in position to acquire Howard.

This whole situation has been horrible for the league. It is a prime example of how star players control the NBA. When they close in on becoming free agents, they can take advantage of the situation by either forcing a trade to a team of their desire, or by giving their current team no indication of their plans for the future and leaving them out to dry.

Over the last year, Dwight Howard has proven to be arguably the most selfish athlete in professional sports. In order to boost his own ego, he simultaneously threw the team that drafted him and has supported him for his entire eight-year career under the bus, destroyed the future of several franchises and negatively affected the league as a whole.

The sad thing is this will most likely happen all over again next season as Howard is in line to become a free agent in 2013.