Dwight Howard: Stuck in Orlando. Is He Just a Little Dazed and Confused?
With the Chris Paul deal finally done, every one of the top 10 players in the NBA is happily situated. Except Dwight Howard, the center for the Orlando Magic.
This stands to reason, because Dwight Howard is the one superstar seemingly bitten by indecision. (Isn't “Superman” supposed to be more imperative?)
One minute Howard is affirming, “I love this city, there is no place I'd rather be but Orlando...I just want to make sure we have the right things here so we can win a championship. I'm all about change. If you're willing to change and you're willing to do what it takes to win then, you know, you got me."
The next minute he's deferring, stating that management “killed the deal” [to his preferred destination, the New Jersey Nets] and that he's “not a happy camper.”
With remarks like these, spoken within the space and time of mere hours of each other, Dwight Howard has surely created his own soap opera. Call it: “Howard's Hope” or “The Edge of Dwight” or possibly the more impersonal, “Search for Tomorrow's Team.”
However, even Dwight Howard is getting a little tired of his own dizzying ambiguity and continuing drama:
“All that matters is that we're practicing and trying to get better. So whatever happens is gonna happen, regardless of what happens right now I'm with the Magic. That hasn't changed. So there's no need to go back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, because I'm still in Orlando."
So within a day's span, Dwight Howard's emotions and attitudes toward his situation have gone from love to unhappiness to resignation. Shakespearean indeed. Or merely like daytime TV.
With regards to Dwight Howard lately equivocating, trying to make nice—“whatever happens, happens”—this may be a clever facade or it may be simple avoidance.
Perhaps he doesn't want to appear to be a LeBron-type villain. Perhaps he assumes a softer exterior might get him to the Nets or Lakers sooner. Perhaps he is just understandably exhausted from his own words.
The fact is, the Orlando Magic basketball team, of which Dwight Howard is still a member, is not going to “have the right things” in place to their big center's satisfaction any time soon, so what's "going to happen," will be just about status quo.
The Magic is a team that, to compete with the Eastern Conference's best, desperately needs scoring help upfront and an even bigger season from their big guard, Jason Richardson.
But in regard to “Dwight's plight,” the Orlando Magic predicament is uncertainty on top of uncertainty.
The team executives are not sure they wish to keep “an unhappy camper,” even if he is, according to ESPN, the second best player in basketball. The franchise athlete, Dwight Howard, isn't sure he wants to stay with a team that can't win a title in the next two years.
One thing's definite: For his own good, Dwight Howard needs to adopt one position and stick with it.
