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Brooklyn Nets Center Dwight Howard has been in the news a lot in the past couple of days as he was trade from the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday. Howard will reportedly be bought out and be a free agent this summer. Howard and FSR's own Caron Butler join Steve and Jeffrey Gorman to talk about the trade from Charlotte, his future and the night he was drafted 14 years ago.
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Caron Butler: There’s been a lot of reports that a trade has been formed involving you going to Brooklyn. Just let me know your future plans and once it officially goes through you know what are you thinking going forward?
Dwight Howard: Well with the situation of me getting traded, one it was kind of blindsided. I literally found out right before I was about to do a charity event, and also I found out on Instagram. I found out through the comment section of one of my pictures, so I was in total shock about the whole situation. I wasn’t upset about the fact that I was traded to Brooklyn, it was more so the shock because I felt that I had a really good year this year. And when they said I was going to Brooklyn I said, “You know what? I’m going to go in there, and make the best of the situation.” Actually what I think is going to happen is there’s going to be a buy out and I will make me a free agent for the summer.
Caron Butler: Now that’s crazy because the second I got wind of the news I found out the same way you did which is extremely unfortunate. But that happens a lot in our business but why do you feel like you get such a bad wrap around the league and through so many sources because I know you away from the game of basketball and you’re a great person but why do you feel you get such a bad wrap?
Dwight Howard: I just think it’s a lot of people making up a lot of different stories and they come up with this narrative about who I am. My grandma has always told me a lie don’t care who tells it and that’s how I look at it. A lot of people are saying a lot of things about me that is unfair.
My main thing is that I just want to go out there and win and give a team, any team I’ve been on the best of me. I came into this league at 18. When you come in at a young age people see all of your mistakes. This is not like going to college, just basically being out in the public eye we are in the public eye every single day. So every mistake that I’ve made, everything that’s happened in my past is put out there publicly. It basically gave people an opinion based off of what they’ve heard and stuff like that. And maybe a little bit of my actions have made people feel a certain type of way and I really want that to change because it’s really not who I am. I’ve never been that way. There’s no way I could be winning community assist awards to be the best person in the community but be a bad teammate so that doesn’t really go well together.
I’m not that type of person and I totally hate that and I really want to do what I can to change that because it’s not right. I’m trying my best. And any teammate that’s ever felt that way, I would love for them to come out and say it's them, put an address on it so this can be cleared out and we can move forward.