Larry Brown Sports

Dwight Howard was booed by Magic fans during introductions before his first game back in Orlando. That came as no surprise; Magic fans were likely eager to attend the game just to boo him. What was surprising was Howard’s reactions to the boos. Though he knew boos were coming, Howard still seemed to play off of the hatred quite well.

Howard admitted in a recent interview that his biggest problem was that he wanted everyone to like him. His desire to leave the Magic while not upsetting the city resulted in him changing his mind several times.

On Tuesday, it looked like Howard finally realized that the people in Orlando dislike him, and that he decided to just use the boos as motivation to stick it to his former team. It’s about time he embraced his villain side.

Video via @Jose3030

On Tuesday, Dwight Howard will be playing his first game in Orlando since being traded to the Los Angeles Lakers over the summer. Orlando hip-hop station Power 95.3 FM decided to welcome Howard back by placing some billboards around the city that poke fun at the team’s former franchise player.

As you can see in the photo above, the billboard has a countdown going “’til Dwight leaves us again!”

Howard apologized to Orlando for the way he dragged fans through his exit process from the city, but that seems to hardly matter. Howard expressed uncertainty over what he wanted to do for over a year. He reportedly wanted out of Orlando, then he opted into an extra year in Orlando, and then he wanted out again. Magic fans will have a hard time forgiving Howard for wanting to leave the team in the first place. This billboard makes that clear.

Photo via Reddit user JumboNess

Dwight Howard has lost a lot of fans in the Orlando area since last season, and his group of supporters shrunk even more last week when the Los Angeles Lakers center called his former Orlando Magic teammates a bunch of guys that nobody wanted. Howard later tried to clarify what he meant, but it seems like most people don’t want to hear it.

Howard will return to Orlando for the first time as a member of the Lakers on Tuesday. During a recent interview with USA Today Sports, he offered an apology to the people of the city where he began his career.

“In Orlando, I handled a lot of stuff the wrong way,” Howard said. “If any of those people in Orlando are upset with how I did it, I apologize for the way I handled it and the way it was handled in the media.

“I really just got caught up in wanting to please everybody else. I really love that city. That was the hardest thing to do was to leave that city because I basically grew up there. That was my whole life. Orlando was it. I did not want to leave all that behind — the city, just everything about it. The fans. But I wanted a change for my life. I just felt like there was something else out there for me.”

No matter what he says, the people of Orlando are going to feel resentment toward Howard for the way he handled himself and allowed his relationship with Stan Van Gundy to become an embarrassment. Whether the reports of him constantly changing his mind about his future with the Magic were true or not, Howard did very little to clear things up during last year’s roller coaster ride. He acknowledged that he made a mistake in just sitting back and allowing the speculation to run rampant.

“Whenever something happened, I should’ve let my teammates know,” Howard explained. “I should’ve said, ‘OK, this is what’s going on. I know what’s being said, but this is how I really feel.’ Or, ‘Hey, Coach, this is what’s being said, but this is how I feel,’ instead of just letting everything pile on and me not saying anything. I just felt at the time like, ‘I’m not going to say anything. I’m just going to sit back and let it unfold.’ By doing that, everybody was getting mixed signals.”

At the moment, Howard’s priority should be helping the Lakers sneak into the playoffs and earning the respect of the fans and his teammates in LA. The Lakers have won eight of their last 10 games and Dwight is averaging 15.5 points and 14.8 rebounds during that stretch. That may help his popularity in LA, but Howard should expect to hear plenty of boos on Tuesday no matter how hard he begs for forgiveness prior to his return.

Dwight Howard attempted to improve his public image by sitting down for a recent interview with KCAL/CBSLA, but the Los Angeles Lakers center may have actually done the opposite. Howard has angered a lot of his former teammates by saying the Orlando Magic was a team “full of people nobody wanted” and that he led it with a smile on his face. JJ Redick is one of those former teammates.

“I’m not surprised by it,” Redick told ESPNLosAngeles.com Wednesday. ”I would be more surprised when Dwight starts taking responsibility. That would be the most negative thing I can say, but that’s the truth.

“You can’t take all the credit and not accept any of the blame.”

Jameer Nelson ripped Howard for the comment on Wednesday, and Rashard Lewis also seems to have taken offense to it.

“We helped Dwight become the player he was,” Lewis told the Orlando Sentinel on Wednesday. “We made a good run. Hell, look at those (conference and division) banners hanging in the stands. They don’t say Dwight Howard on them …”

Realizing that his interview has gained so much negative attention, Howard attempted to clear the air.

“My statement was just to say that our team that I played with in Orlando, we were the underdogs,” Howard said after the Lakers’ win on Wednesday night. “Nobody really talked about our team. It was underrated. Everybody overlooked us for the whole time I was there in Orlando and I hated that. We all hated that. We thrived off that. My comments were never to say anything disrespectful to those guys. Those were my teammates for years. They helped me become the player that I am today and we all got to the Finals because of that.

“It was never intended to disrespect or downgrade any of those guys. I would always tell them I wouldn’t trade them for the world. That’s how I viewed it. For the most part, those guys know that. They know who I am and they probably just heard something and people twisted it and turned it in different ways. I’m not that kind of guy. I would never disrespect those guys. It just kind of got blown out of proportion.”

If Dwight’s former teammates really knew he had their back, they would have defended him and said the comments got blown out of proportion. Instead, many of them were angered by it. In my opinion, that says all you need to know.

Jameer Nelson responded Wednesday to Dwight Howard’s disparaging comments about the Orlando Magic, calling the center “unprofessional” for his remarks.

In a recent interview with KCAL/CBSLA, Howard said he took a team in Orlando “full of people nobody wanted” and led them to the NBA Finals. Howard was probably exaggerating for effect because he was trying to remind everyone of what he’s accomplished in his career, but his negative portrayal of his former teammates is not going over well.

Nelson and Howard both began their NBA careers in the 2004-2005 season with the Magic and were teammates their entire careers until Howard was traded to the Lakers in the offseason. Though they were extremely close in Orlando, the relationship appeared to become strained last year when the two reportedly got in a fight. It looks like they still have some tension.

“At some point, when are you [Dwight] gonna as a man, when are you going to take ownership and stay out of the media in a professional manner?” Nelson said of Howard Wednesday, per the Orlando Sentinel.

“I would be less of a man to comment on certain things that people comment on about me and my teammates. We had a great run as a group, as core guys, and he was a part of it (reaching the 2009 Finals) and for him to say things about anybody in a negative manner, that’s up to him.

“That’s his opinion. If that’s how he feels, that’s how he feels.”

Like I said, I really don’t think Dwight thought carefully about his comments. I think he just said them to prop himself up. If he really thinks about them, he’ll probably realize how wrong he was. GM Otis Smith did a great job drafting or bringing in lesser-known players like Marcin Gortat and Courtney Lee, but don’t even try to tell me that nobody wanted Rashard Lewis or Hedo Turkoglu, or that nobody would have wanted Nelson at the time.

Howard tries to present himself as a jovial fella everyone should love, but that reputation keeps disintegrating because of his actions.

Photo credit: Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE

Most doctors would tell Dwight Howard that he returned from back surgery too quickly to make his Los Angeles Lakers debut. Howard’s season ended last April when he went under the knife, and he returned to action just six months later. He undoubtedly felt pressure to make his Lakers debut as quickly as possible.

On Tuesday, Howard said he does not regret coming back sooner than he should have.

“Looking back on it, I could have sat out the whole season until now and starting playing now, but I just felt like we had such a great opportunity,” he said according to the LA Times. “Some of these guys, their windows for winning are very small, and I just wanted to get back and try to do whatever I can to help this team, knowing that I wasn’t in great shape. My body wasn’t all the way there yet.”

Howard has not been playing at 100% health all season, and his game has been criticized as a result. Between his back and shoulder, Dwight has not been anything close to the dominating force he was in Orlando. However, he said he has received support from people like Phil Jackson.

“I’ve had people really just help me out,” Howard said, via ESPNLosAngeles.com. “Guys like Phil [Jackson], he texts me and he understands how it is to come off back surgery. He just said it takes a full year to recover, so you can’t beat yourself up over the things that have happened this year.”

Despite some of the incredibly dumb things Howard has said this year that have not helped his public image, it’s obvious he has been playing hurt. Laker fans may be disappointed with the way things have turned out, but Howard has clearly been in pain throughout most of the season. If he was healthy, things may be going differently for the team at the moment.

Los Angeles Lakers center Dwight Howard was once one of the most beloved players in the NBA, but somewhere along the line he became a phony. Or, should we say, that became the public perception of Superman.

Howard has battled critics all season long in LA. Most of them are the same critics who have been riding him since he was a member of an Orlando Magic team that was heading in the wrong direction. Rather than letting his situation work itself out and remaining quiet, Howard opened his mouth on several different instances and came off as selfish and arrogant.

Howard recently sat down for an exclusive interview with KCAL9′s Kristine Leahy in an attempt to do some damage control, but he may have screwed up once again. He discussed how much passion he has for the game and how much it bothers him when people say he fakes injuries and doesn’t care about winning, but he also threw in a regrettable comment about his days with the Magic.

“I always tell people, hey, our team in Orlando was a team full of people who nobody wanted and I was the leader,” Howard explained. “I led that team with a smile on my face.”

If Howard always tells people that, that’s probably why he always comes across people who don’t like him. As Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don’t Lie mentioned, two of Dwight’s former teammates in Orlando — Earl Clark and Chris Duhon — were traded to LA with him. Although, I suppose they aren’t two of the players he was referring to that no team wanted.

This is the problem with Howard. Even if his heart is in the right place a lot of the time, he can’t seem to avoid saying that one thing that gives critics the right to bash him. Whether its calling his former teammates a bunch of nobody’s or acting buddy-buddy with Stan Van Gundy in front of the cameras, Dwight can’t seem to keep his image clean even when he tries.