Dwight Howard Asked Los Angeles Lakers to Hire Phil Jackson as Coach Last Season

It's hard to be sure if it would have made a difference in the end, but if the Los Angeles Lakers had honored Dwight Howard's request to hire Phil Jackson, perhaps the team wouldn't have lost out on the most coveted free agent of the summer.

According to Alex Kennedy of Hoopsworld, Howard said shortly after he agreed to sign with the Houston Rockets on a four-year, $88 million deal that he had asked the Lakers to hire Jackson as the team's head coach last season.

For anyone paying attention throughout the 2012-13 campaign, this isn't really news.

Howard made his feelings on the Zen Master known almost immediately after Mike Brown was fired last November. In fact, based on some of Howard's phrasing at the time, it sounded as though the big man was convinced that a Jackson hiring was a matter of "when" and not "if."

Howard's affinity for Jackson dates back to his days with the Orlando Magic, as Kennedy noted shortly after Brown got the ax in Los Angeles.

Of course, the Lakers never relented to Howard's requests. L.A. flirted with Jackson after cutting Brown loose, but due to some combination of Jackson's demands and owner Jim Buss' personal vendetta against the team's former coach, nothing materialized.

Instead, the Lakers hired Mike D'Antoni, with whom Howard clashed almost immediately.

Despite the rather obvious mismatch between D'Antoni and the Lakers' personnel, there was no serious talk of replacing him with Jackson during the season. Understandably, the Lakers were reluctant to face the embarrassment of firing D'Antoni and paying two coaches (Brown included) to sit at home.

It seems that stubbornness ended up costing the Lakers, as D12 is now off to Houston.

If Jackson had been hired when Howard requested, it's possible that things would have turned out just as badly for the Lakers. But there's no way they could have turned out worse.