ORLANDO, Fla. — An emotional Dwight Howard, the greatest basketball player in Orlando Magic history, actually wanted to talk some baseball Monday.
That’s right, on the day he was inducted into Magic’s Hall of Fame, Dwight wanted to tell a heartfelt, faith-based story about our national pastime.
“God likes to play baseball,” Dwight told a standing-room-only crowd of family, friends, former teammates and Magic dignitaries at Kia Center before a game vs. the Los Angeles Lakers. “You see, I started out at home plate here in Orlando, hit a couple of balls out of the park and started running around the bases of life. I got to first base, second base, third base, but God had to bring me back home so He brought me back to Orlando. This is my home. It will always and forever be my home.”
Welcome home, Dwight.
Welcome back into Orlando’s good graces.
Magic fans have missed you.
We all have missed you.
Even us members of the mean ol’ media who blasted you on your way out of town all of those years ago.
“There were times I was mad at you and wanted to knock your head off,” Dwight told me during a media scrum after his induction ceremony, “but then I came to realize that you didn’t have a personal problem with me. You were just doing your job.”
And I’ve come to realize that Dwight Howard did his job when he played for the Orlando Magic, and did it better than any player ever has. And he did it without load management, without taking any days off and by playing relentessly and brutally hard every single game. In today’s world, there’s a lot to be said about that.
I know, I know, there are still some fans who hold a grudge all these years later about the way Dwight left, but what good does that do? As someone wise once said, “Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” As someone even wiser once said, “It is better to have love and lost than to never have loved at all.”
On this Magical Monday — when a franchise-record crowd of 19,598 showed up to watch the Magic beat LeBron, Luka and the Lakers 118-106 — it was time for Orlando and its fans to celebrate the love they once had for Dwight rather than to let the lingering bitterness fester forever. After all, Dwight has paid his penance and admitted Monday that he’s had many misgivings and a zillion what-might-have-been second thoughts over the years.
“It would be a lie to say I don’t think about it every day,” a philosophical Dwight said of his messy departure from Orlando. “It’s like when you’re in a relationship with somebody and it ends and you say, ‘Man, why did I leave?’ Sometimes, I do get mad and beat myself up over leaving. I say to myself, ‘Why did you freakin’ leave?’ Do I have regrets? I’ve had those moments, but life is supposed to teach you certain lessons, and by leaving and going through all of my experiences it has taught me the lessons that I needed at the time. … That’s just how life is.”
While Shaquille O’Neal left Orlando and went on to win three championships with Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, Dwight went on to become an NBA journeyman. Ironically, he did win one title in Orlando — but as a role player during a second stint with the Lakers in the NBA’S COVID-induced Disney bubble
Mostly, though, Dwight became a vagabond, bouncing from team to team to team. He was an NBA superstar in the prime of his career when he forced the Magic into dealing him in a blockbuster four-team trade in August 2012. Howard wound up with the Lakers, a one-year debacle in which he clashed with Kobe and ended up signing a massive free-agent contract with the Houston Rockets the following season.
He fizzled out by the end of his tenure there and soon became a role player who took jobs wherever he could get them. He made eight different stops with six different teams in his final 10 NBA seasons before ending his career playing overseas.
All these years later, it seems that late Magic owner Rich DeVos was right when he warned Dwight before he left.
“When you’re young, sometimes you don’t realize … that the loyalty you develop in a community is always remembered,” DeVos said then. “But if you leave, you don’t pick it up in the next town. It’s not an add-on because you lose what you had. Maybe you gain some new [love], but maybe you don’t. Maybe the net gain isn’t as good as you think.”
Dwight found out that there’s a reason that the grass often appears greener on the other side of the fence: It’s usually growing over the septic tank. As I was walking into Kia Center before Dwight’s induction ceremony, I couldn’t help but thinking that had he stayed here maybe I’d be walking past his bronze statue at the arena entrance we called the “Dwight House” when it was being built.
Some will say Dwight was cursed after he left Orlando, but, in reality, injuries and evolution contributed to his downfall. The NBA was evolving into a 3-point-shooting perimeter-oriented game, leaving back-to-the-basket centers such as Dwight struggling to find the same level of impact.
Dwight’s body began to betray him. In Orlando, he was a tireless workhorse who didn’t know the meaning of “load management.” He played all 82 games in five of his eight Magic seasons and missed only five combined games in two other seasons. It was only in his final season, when he had back surgery, that he missed the final 28 games of the regular season and the playoffs.
Dwight was never the same player.
The Magic have never been the same team.
The fact is, the Magic got Dwight’s best eight seasons and Dwight gave the Magic everything he had. Yes, the ending was unfortunate as his relationship with popular coach Stan Van Gundy deteriorated and there was that awkward media gathering when he told reporters how Dwight tried to get him fired. Dwight unknowingly walked up, interrupted the proceedings and put his arm around Stan as if they were the best of buddies.
Stan eventually got fired and Dwight ended up being traded.
But that was 13 years ago.
Life moves on.
Dwight and Stan have long since buried any hatchets. Dwight showed up at the celebration of life after Stan’s wife, Kim, passed away two years ago. In a tearful, emotion-paced speech Monday, Dwight thanked him and said, “Without Stan Van Gundy, there is no Dwight Howard.” He also thanked his other former Magic coaches and teammates, his friends and family and, of course, Magic fans. He seemed truly touched that so many members of the DeVos family — the owners of the team — showed up for his induction.
It should tell you something about the Magic organization that players who leave, no matter the circumstances, are always welcomed back. It also should tell you something about this team and this town that players such as Shaq and Dwight have expressed their regrets about ever leaving in the first place.
“When you look at the landscape of sports, there are very few superstars who remain with their team for their entire careers,” Magic CEO Alex Martins noted. “I don’t think any exit is completely clean during the course of a career. … It’s about reflecting on a player’s time with your team, the impact he had on your franchise and whether you can look back fondly on the time he played with us.”
As a whole, it’s impossible not to to have fond memories of the Dwight era in Orlando.
His dominance and his defense. His power and his presence. His winning and his grinning. His Superman strength and his Ironman durability.
It was time to put the greatest player in Magic history into the Hall of Fame.
And, please, spare me the rhetoric about Shaq being the Magic’s GOAT.
That honor belongs to Dwight and Dwight alone.
Dwight is the Magic’s all-time leading scorer, rebounder and shot-blocker and led the Magic to their greatest era. He became the first player in history to become the Defensive Player of the Year three years in a row.
He was in Orlando twice as long as Shaq and he at least gave the Magic a heads-up that he wanted to leave. The Magic got nothing when Shaq bolted as a free agent but were able to garner a bevy of players and draft picks when they traded Dwight. One of those players, Nikola Vucevic, went on to become an All-Star and was traded in 2021 to the Chicago Bulls for current starting center Wendell Carter Jr. and two first-round draft picks — one of whom turned into young star Franz Wagner, who led the Magic with 32 points Monday night in the victory over the hated Lakers.
In other words, even today, Dwight’s legacy lives on in Orlando.
Welcome home, Dwight.
Welcome to the Hall of Fame.
You earned it.
