Dubai: At 6ft 11in and 125kg, fun-loving NBA star Dwight Howard has long been known as basketball’s biggest kid.
But the Houston Rockets star has told Gulf News he now takes the game as seriously as anyone.
Once one of the league’s most popular players, Howard is now one of its most polarising. The muscular centre saw his reputation take a nosedive after two seasons of turmoil, starting in 2011, when he reportedly demanded a trade away from the Orlando Magic, the team that had drafted him out of high school seven years earlier.
A single season with the Los Angeles Lakers followed, during which he reportedly feuded with Kobe Bryant, one of the game’s biggest stars.
Now 29, Howard is preparing for his third campaign with the Rockets. And the man once known for playing with a smile on his face is now putting winning firmly ahead of admiration.
“Popularity is cool, but I want to be legendary,” said Howard, who was in Dubai to offer tips to some of the city’s young basketball players at the BasicBall Academy in the Dubai World Trade Centre.
“I think that has been something that is placed upon me, that I don’t take what I do seriously, because I am smiling and having fun.
“When I play basketball, I take it seriously. I train very hard. When I go on the court, there are 20,000 people and I’m in a whole different element. That’s the time I really get to be myself. It’s my sanctuary.
“People that I come across, they enjoy seeing me smile, they enjoy seeing me have a good time, but also taking it seriously — and that’s how I like to [approach] the game.”
After leading the Magic to the NBA Finals in 2009, Howard’s popularity peaked with a Defensive Player of the Year Award and a spot on the All-NBA First Team.
Yet after a frustrating 2010-11 campaign for the Florida outfit, which ended in a play-off first-round defeat to the Atlanta Hawks, Howard reportedly asked to be traded. He retracted his demand less than a year later, but was soon back in the news when his coach Stan Van Gundy revealed his star player wanted him fired.
Reports of another trade demand followed and Howard was shipped to California ahead of the 2012-13 season. His time in LA, peppered with reports that he felt Bryant was shooting too much, ended after just one season when he signed with the Rockets in the summer of 2013.
“I don’t have any regrets,” Howard told Gulf News. “I think a lot of the things that have happened have been twisted and turned in the media. Those things tend to upset me. Fans who have no clue about what’s going on believe what they read and what they see sometimes.
“I would say since those things have happened, I wish some of those things had been handled in a different way. I wish that things had been better on both sides. I had a great time in Orlando and I think, a lot of times, people feel that if we leave a team, we left the city, and we didn’t like the city, and that was never the case. We looked at it as business.
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“That is the perception that people have of me sometimes, because of what has happened with me leaving Orlando. Things that they may not know happened upset me. I try not to let it affect me.”
Last season, injuries limited Howard to just 41 of 82 regular season games as the Rockets, led by MVP runner-up James Harden, secured the second seed in a strong Western Conference.
Howard came back for the play-offs as Houston became just the ninth team in NBA history to win a play-off series in which they faced a 3-1 deficit — against the Los Angeles Clippers in the Western Conference semi-finals. The Rockets were knocked out by eventual NBA champions the Golden State Warriors in the conference finals.
A championship ring may have eluded him so far, but Howard knows only too well that winning a title is often used as a barometer to separate the good players with the great.
“[Winning a title] is very important,” he said. “That’s the first thing I said when I got to the NBA with the Magic — I feel like we can win a championship and I would do whatever I can to help my team to win. I tried, as we try every year. It’s very tough to win the NBA Championship.
“People who watch basketball, they see a player and they say ‘he doesn’t have [championship] rings’. They judge their careers on rings. There are a lot of great players who haven’t got rings. There are a lot of players who have one who may never have even got off the bench. It’s just something that’s very hard to accomplish, especially a championship at the professional level.
“But I won’t stop until I get that ring and even then I will keep going. That’s something that I work hard for every summer. I feel like a part of my life was taken away every time we lose. Hopefully next year will be our year.”
