Dwight Howard is in no mood to talk about the Miami Heat
Dwight Howard, Matt Barnes, Orlando Magic — posted by Josh Robbins on August, 2 2010 11:37 AM Discuss This: Comments(16) | Add to del.icio.us | Digg it
Dwight Howard, shown here during the 2010 playoffs, wouldn't talk about the Miami Heat today (Photo by Gary W. Green, Orlando Sentinel)
Dwight Howard is visiting his annual basketball camp at UCF today, and he’s in no mood to talk about the new-look Miami Heat.
“Listen,” he told reporters earlier this morning, “if you all ask me questions about the Miami Heat, I will not be answering them today. Please! I was in China for two weeks [recently]. That’s all I got asked about. ‘What do you think about the Big Three?’ ”
Then, he sat down in a chair, and a smile crossed Howard’s face.
“There’s a Big Two in Orlando,” he said. “The Big Two is in Orlando: Stan [Van Gundy] and Patrick [Ewing].”
Howard’s stopover in Central Florida will be brief. He’ll be traveling to Senegal later this week to participate in a Basketball without Borders camp. He also is planning a trip to India to promote the NBA and a trip later this summer to work for a second time with Hakeem Olajuwon.
In June, Howard worked out with Olajuwon in Texas.
So, what did Howard get out of those workout sessions?
“Basically, what he was saying was I have to become a person that is not afraid to do anything on the floor,” Howard said. “He said right now there’s only certain parts of my game that I’m not afraid to do, but other parts I am. I have to be able to do all of those things, basically. That’s the biggest thing I took from him.
“I just think he was watching and seeing me play for a while,” Howard added later. “All the things we worked on, he was just wondering why I never used those things in a game. He saw all the things that I could do, and he was very impressed. He said that I cannot be afraid to do all these things.”
Some other tidbits from Howard’s media availability:
• Howard was asked what he thought about the Magic’s offseason moves, and it’s clear that he’ll miss small forward Matt Barnes, who was not offered a contract by the Magic and eventually signed with the Los Angeles Lakers.
“I was a little hurt with some of the people being, I guess, signing with other teams,” Howard said. “I just want the players that are returning to understand that if we want to win a championship, we all have got to be on the same page. Every guy has to go out there and man-up and do their jobs so we can win a championship.”
• Howard was asked what he thinks about the changed Eastern Conference landscape and, once again, he would not talk about the Heat.
• Howard was asked if he’s been working out.
“Well, I just really started working out,” Howard responded. “All summer, I’ve just been doing push-ups and sit-ups and eating McDonald’s. It’s time to really get serious and get ready for next season. But I think it was good for me, because it’s the first time I really had a chance to really get some good rest. Even though I was travelling, I got a chance to rest but really focus on helping the kids get better. I also had my camp in Atlanta; I had a girls camp and a boys camp for two weeks. All those things right there just really, I guess, make me miss basketball even more. So, once I get back in the gym it’s like I’m ready to go.”
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