Dwight Howard to Hub?

Magic star discusses future flight plans

By Steve Bulpett / Celtics Beat

ORLANDO — There is no need to update Dwight Howard’s “list.” He hasn’t developed an obsessive need for fresh clam chowder.

In fact, we find this whole circus to be rather distasteful. The Magic center can opt out and become a free agent this summer, and until then or such time as Orlando trades him to an attractive city of his choosing, the success of his team will be only a sidebar to the impending Dwight flight.

All indications from sources close to Howard are that, while his list of preferred teams also included the Mavericks, he’d love to wind up in a star center like Los Angeles or New York, which would leave out bucolic Boston. But his repeated reverence for the Celtics [team stats] fairly begged the question.


And even though we don’t believe this is a team of his dreams, we do know that the Celts will have a great deal of money to throw at a free agent or two in the next offseason. And if Howard is still available — if the Magic don’t blink and move him before the March deadline — C’s president Danny Ainge will undoubtedly put in a call to Team Dwight.

The question is whether he’ll answer.

“Always. Always,” Howard told the Herald. “I’d always listen to a team like that.

“My thing is I want to win. It’s not something like I’m doing this for money. I win. I want to do it my way.”

There may be two problems for the Celtics in that last paragraph. Howard may question whether the club can win with him, Rajon Rondo [stats], Paul Pierce [stats], a collection of minimum salary veterans and a few children. And his “way” likely means a bigger stage.

On the subject of what he’s looking for, Howard hit on some reasonable themes while seemingly throwing a chill at the Magic by comparison.

“The first thing is basketball,” he said. “I want to win a championship, and it takes a certain type of team to win a championship. You know, there’s a lot of teams who are great during the regular season. They play well, but it’s different once you play in those playoffs, you know? It’s gut-check time.

“Like I told the Magic, I just want to win. I don’t want a team that doesn’t know how you have to win in the playoffs. I want a team that’s going to go out every night and forget about stats, forget about who scores the most points or who is the fan favorite. Just go out and play, play for each other and play to win. That’s the only thing.”

Howard then began speaking in Green tones. (The thought occurred that he might be playing to his audience of one Boston reporter, but he has referenced the Celtics numerous times to others as an example.)

“You know,” said Howard, “you look at a team like Boston and look at a team like LA who’s won . . . especially Boston. Man, those guys came together and they didn’t care who scored all the points. They had done all the individual stuff.

“You know, for me, I’ve done a lot of things individually, but I want a championship. All those accolades that I’ve got over the years, they mean a lot, but it’s just different watching teams hold up that trophy and knowing how hard you have to work to get it.

“They have the championship mentality,” he said of the Celts. “It means a lot. Like I said, I like the team. They play hard and they go after it, and that’s what I like.”

Now Dwight Howard is in a position to go after what he wants. It’s created a scene that sadly takes away from basketball and a very good team off to a 12-5 start, but he seems all right with that.

“What people don’t understand is that this is a business, and at the end of the day you always have to take care of yourself,” Howard said. “People just say, ‘Oh, these guys are prima donnas. They want this and they want that.’ But this is life. You’ve got to go and take it, because nobody is going to give it to you. And I just go out and do my thing. I’m just going to play basketball.

“I told the Magic how I felt at the beginning of the year. They decided they weren’t going to do anything, so I said, ‘OK, I’m here. I’m going to play until I can’t play no more.’ You know, I don’t have no problems with being here. I want to win. That’s what I told them. So as long as I’m here — as long as they keep me around — I’m going to play hard every night and try to win a championship.

“I want to win, and I want to do it different from how everybody else did it or how everybody expects me to do it. I work extremely hard to be the best.”


And he will have no shortage of willing employers. The operative question from a Celtics [team stats] point of view is whether Ainge, a former Toronto Blue Jays third baseman, will have a legitimate chance to throw a pitch.

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