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.
