Did you see the change in Dwight Howard? You should have. His numbers and impact this season have been MVP-worthy, going for 23 points and 14.1 rebounds a game while helping to keep the Magic as one of the best defenses in the NBA. But it isn’t just that he’s become a better player. He’s been a different player with a different attitude. Howard has smiled less and tried to quiet the fun in his game. He’s gotten into shouting matches with his teammates probably as often this season as in his first six years combined. Plus, there are those 18 technical fouls.
Howard admits he wanted a change this season, wanted people to focus more on his game than his sometimes goofy antics. It worked to an extent. But, the big man has grown tired of the act.
Yesterday, Howard told Zach McCann of the Orlando Sentinel that he wants to go back to the old Dwight Howard. He doesn’t want to be angry all the time:
Howard wants that consternation to stop. He wants to have fun, like when the Magic beat the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals in ’09 and after the game Howard yelled to the locker room, “I’m too nice! I smile too much!”
“I just felt like… Why am I trying to not smile or do what I did in previous seasons?” Howard said. “Why am I doing this to myself? I think people enjoy the way I play because of some of the things I do on the court. Besides me going out there on the court and playing hard, I do like to smile. And the fact that I am interactive with fans and kids on the court; I just can’t allow anything to keep me away from it.”
Most of his teammates agree with Howard. But Magic coach Stan Van Gundy told McCann he wants to see his best player do a better job of managing the two:
“Dwight can be loose and a little goofy at times and it is hard to say that it’s affecting his play because you just look at what he’s done this year, but it affects his teammates,” Van Gundy said. “It affects their preparation and it affects their play. So, I think he’s got to be able to weigh those two things.”
While a player’s disposition is often overrated with how much he cares about the game or how seriously he takes it, this perception is a problem for Dwight Howard. He seems to believe he feels more comfortable and plays his best when he is just acting like himself, but the numbers show this has been Howard’s best year yet. Is that a product of simply his development as a player or do the individual improvements correlate to the way he acted for much of this season?
It’s an interesting topic and surely one that will be brought up again during Orlando’s playoff run.
Should Dwight Howard return to more of his fun-loving ways?
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