Dwight Howard: Greatness, or a smile on the court for D12?

Dwight Howard

The Free Agency started on July 1 in the NBA and with that a lot of buzz has been around a lot of players. But no buzz could be bigger than that surrounding Dwight Howard as a Free Agent. This Free Agency could very well define the future of both Dwight and the team that he signs with. With all the speculation, the money that he can get with the Lakers ($118 million) and the very chance to play in the great Lakers franchise, one would think that he’d want to re-sign with the Lakers. But that’s not what it looks like.

First of all, everyone is talking about Dwight not signing with LA because the Lakers didn’t have any chemistry last year. But if you look into the past, towards the making of any eventual Championship team, you’d see that they didn’t have chemistry right away; it took them time to develop it. When the Lakers signed NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal back in 1996, he and eventually one of the NBA’s top leading scorers, Kobe Bryant, didn’t win a championship right away. So chemistry is not an issue; that comes with time.

For re-signing Dwight to a 5-year, $118 million contract, the Lakers not only have the advantage of offering Dwight $33 million more than any other team in the NBA, but they also have a knack for shopping great NBA big men. As Kobe tweeted on July 1 when the free agency officially started, “Start of free agency is always interesting.. Many teams. Only one Lakers #goldenarmor #FreeAgency #LA #bleedgold“.

But there is one thing that will tell you why Dwight Howard is not likely to sign with the LA Lakers, which no other sports channel/website will tell you, and that is the fact that there was too much blabbering between “D12″ and almost everybody else on the Lakers team in the last season. On court, he blabbered with Steve Nash, he blabbered almost after every defensive play broke down and looked disappointed in his teammates; rightly so on the defensive aspect, because the team frequently let him down on that end of the court.

He almost always threw some words back at Mike D’Antoni whenever he called Dwight to the bench. Even if Mike would have told him something about his play in the game, which is the job of a coach, Howard would have some words to throw at his coach while he would be walking to the bench.

Most of all, let’s not forget that when the Lakers season ended after a 1st round playoff sweep by the San Antonio Spurs, who later on went on to be the Western Conference Champions, Dwight Howard was ejected in the early half of the last game of Lakers season, which is not a sign of a “great” player and more importantly not a sign of a player who is happy with the team he plays for.

Great players don’t lose their temper and commit mistakes, which we saw Dwight do a lot in the last season in LA and also in Orlando. Great players embrace their difficulties and utilise their anger and help their team by playing even better. Lastly, when he was ejected from the final game of the Lakers’ season, he had some words for the general manager Mitchell “Mitch” Kupchak too, which was a first sight for every Laker fan – a player shouting at Kupchack.

All these signs indicate that Dwight is less likely to be back in LA, where he would have the pressure to win and perform like a star that he wants to be. He would rather be in Houston Rockets, where he would have teammates with whom he can have a laugh about winning a championship, and this is justified by the fact that Dwight is a player who loves to smile when he plays on the court. He himself said after being allegedly poked by Kobe Bryant that he hadn’t been serious about the game. More importantly, these incidents indicate the childish nature of the so-called “Best Centre in the League”.

Despite all of these things, we know people can change and most of the times it takes some motivation to drive them to this change. What’s better motivation than all those banners hanging up in the Staples Center?

If Dwight leaves, he will be tagged as the root of problems, which lead him to leave Orlando Magic and now maybe LA. But if he stays and changes himself, even if the Lakers do not win a championship in the coming 1 or 2 years, which is hard to believe if you have the league’s best new changed “C” and one of the best to ever play the game, “The Black Mamba” Kobe Bryant. Dwight will still be recognised as one of the great players and a future hall-of-famer, despite not winning a championship in the coming years.

We will find out what Dwight Howard will be described as in the history of NBA on July 10. After all, “It’s a man’s actions that describe him as a man.”