Dwight seems to have exclusive interviews every day now about whatever is on his mind. This time he talks to USA Today about his love for Orlando.
“In Orlando, I handled a lot of stuff the wrong way,” he said, sitting at his kitchen table. “If any of those people in Orlando are upset with how I did it, I apologize for the way I handled it and the way it was handled in the media.
“I really just got caught up in wanting to please everybody else. I really love that city. That was the hardest thing to do was to leave that city, because I basically grew up there. That was my whole life. Orlando was it. I did not want to leave all that behind — the city, just everything about it. The fans. But I wanted a change for my life. I just felt like there was something else out there for me.”
The contradictions in the previous paragraph are plentiful, but not unexpected for Dwight Howard, who is just attempting, just now to grown up and be a man.
“There are a lot of things about me that have changed,” said Howard, the 27-year-old Atlanta native who was drafted first overall out of high school in 2004. “I’m becoming a better man because of the stuff that has happened to me this last year and a half. Everybody goes through stuff like this. Even though I’m going through it where everybody in the world can see it, I’m happy that it’s happening.
“If it didn’t happen, I’d be stuck in my ways. I would never change, and then it would be a lot worse. For all this stuff to happen, for me to sit back and see, and evaluate myself and what I could’ve done better, and realize that I needed to make a change, I’m getting better. I’m growing up. I’m maturing.”
Better late than never and he is a very big reason the Lakers are finally starting to dig themselves out of the hole they dug for themselves.
We will see, if Dwight has really turned the corner or if he is trying to fool us, like he has down in the past..