The denigration of Dwight Howard continued in the days after he decided to sign with the Houston Rockets, but that was nothing new.
Through 20 months of twists and turns in the saga we came to know as the "Dwightmare," from Orlando to Los Angeles and finally to the July 5 day that his decision to go to the Rockets was first revealed by USA TODAY Sports, he was the target of well-deserved criticism because of the whimsical way he had gone about his career of late.
But in choosing to leave the Los Angeles Lakers and join a Rockets team that exploded on the Western Conference scene by trading for James Harden last October, he did exactly what his detractors wish he would have done so much earlier — make a clear and understandable decision about his basketball future.
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COMMENTARY: Dwight made the right choice
All the noise about his warped priorities, all those signs that he cared more about his business than his basketball, and Howard got it right in the end by chasing the one dream so many wondered if he cared about anymore: a championship. He left nearly $30 million on the table to head for Houston, signing a four-year, $88 million deal rather than the five-year, $117 million contract the Lakers were allowed to offer. In doing so, he set the table for a revival that — if it comes to fruition — will be nearly impossible to nitpick.
It is too easily forgotten that Howard was among the walking wounded for most of his time with the Lakers. His back surgery in April 2012 left him immobile for months, and his October return, as Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak later admitted, was premature. He was there without truly being there, in other words, with his legs still tingling, his vintage bounce coming and going and physical limitations compounding the problems already present on a Lakers team that clearly lacked chemistry.
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Howard will be a happier, healthier version of himself than the one we saw in that trial run in Hollywood, what with Kobe Bryant's shadow so far away now and his younger running mates in Harden, Chandler Parsons and Jeremy Lin aware of his top-tier place in their new pecking order. And that, make no mistake, is enough for the rest of the NBA to lament the reality that another Western Conference contender has been born.
the Rockets and Lakers finished with the same 45-37 record during the 2012-13 regular season. Yet their situations couldn't have been more different — one full of hope and progress and the other a dysfunctional disaster that fell so short of even their own expectations.
The Rockets are an upstart team that added a dominant big man in the middle, meaning they should start next year's playoffs with home-court advantage and will be in the mix from there. They will be good, but there will be none of the hype-hell that he took so much of the fall for before. It is, without question, a very different starting point than the all-or-nothing world in which he lived last season. What's more, their coach fits Howard better.
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Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni runs a system where only one big man was necessary, so the pairing of Howard and Pau Gasol was problematic. With Rockets coach Kevin "Old School" McHale, as Howard dubbed him in his introductory news conference, a content Howard will likely be a scary Howard.
The Rockets knew this, and the theme of "happiness" was clearly a part of their presentation in Los Angeles. They had taken the first crack at Howard, the first of five teams (along with the Lakers, Dallas Mavericks, Golden State Warriors and Atlanta Hawks) to meet with him at a Bel Air hotel and share all the reasons he needed to come their way. They offered more potential than the Lakers with far less pressure, and that clearly appealed to the 27-year-old three-time defensive player of the year who is now four years removed from his lone Finals appearance.
"I made this decision for me," Howard told news reporters on that day. "I really want to be happy. And like (owner Les Alexander) said earlier, if you can't be happy when you're playing, then it's not fun. I just want to get back to being that guy who's having fun and enjoying basketball but at the same time dominating. I did that with a smile on my face. There's nothing wrong with doing that.
"I'm not going to get up here and say we're going to win five championships. I'm not going to do that. But I think if we really dedicate ourselves and sacrifice everything we've got for a championship, then at the end of the season we should be holding up the trophy."
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It took going to Los Angeles for him to see why the premise that had so much to do with him wanting to leave Orlando was so flawed. He realized that winning trumps market size when it comes to the factors that control the way a player is perceived and treated. Add in the always-overbearing presence of Bryant, and Howard learned the hard way that Laker Land wasn't all he had hoped it would be.
He put up some of the best numbers around during the second half of the season, only to be virtually ignored when the individual accolades were being decided. He finished a remarkably low 14th in this year's voting for defensive player of the year and was third-team All-NBA. The Lakers didn't win enough and had far too much negativity, so he paid the price along with anyone not named Kobe Bryant (who made first-team All-NBA).
As he had put it to USA TODAY Sports during a mid-March interview in his Bel Air home, "A lot of people say the grass is greener on the other side ... and I would always come back to them saying, 'If you do the right things, buy your own grass, then it'll always be green.' "
They're laying the sod in Houston now, with greener pastures ahead.
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