What was dwight howards back injury

He's averaging Redick and Jameer Nelson start in the backcourt. USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo said Thursday night he hadn't been told of Howard's plans, and it was too early to speculate on the Olympic team. The final roster of 12 players and six alternates is due June 18, and the U. But we may have to consider, you know, invitations to a couple other players.

That's a possibility. We'll talk about it. Skip to main content Skip to navigation. Agent: Howard to have surgery, done for year. Orlando Magic. Four players ejected after Gobert, Turner tussle. Utah Jazz.

Chicago Bulls. Pistons' Olynyk knee to miss at least six weeks. Detroit Pistons. Green takes Pels to task after 5 technicals. New Orleans Pelicans. Beal has arguably been an All-NBA snub for two straight years now and the biggest reason, no matter how the voters explained it on their ballots, has to be the team's record. If Beal put up the numbers he has had the past two seasons on win teams, he very likely would have gotten the honors.

Howard didn't just leave the Wizards for the Lakers on his own volition, he was traded first. After a lost season in D. He then signed in L. Now, Howard did have a player option for the second year of his contract with the Wizards, so he could have opted out after a better season in search for more money. But he also may have liked the situation he was in and stayed on a restructured deal. If Howard doesn't go to the Lakers, he doesn't win a championship and that might be the biggest 'what if' on this list.

We're talking about a guy who had about as good a resume as any player in NBA history that wasn't a champion. This ring completes his career in many respects and it also brings it full circle, as he was back with the Lakers and back in Orlando where it all began. So, Howard has many reasons to view the injury he had in Washington as a blessing in disguise. Do the Lakers win the title without Howard? Clearly, he wasn't their best player.

But Howard was also a fairly essential piece for them all season as one of the most reliable members of their supporting cast. He averaged a very efficient 7. Bench players don't get much better than that and his signing was among the best moves any team made last summer.

And I have bones, too. It really upset me that anyone would say that I was doing something out of spite for my team or my city. I have the utmost respect for the Magic organization, for the people of Orlando. Everything I did was from my heart, and I would never do anything to betray my city. That same report included this tidbit :. Howard had a herniated disk repaired, and sizable fragments of bone removed on April In other words, Howard's resurfacing didn't yield any new information of note regarding his recovery, though it did include another impassioned defense of its legitimacy.

A write-up by Wojnarowski on July 3 regarding the Lakers' discussions of a potential Bynum-for-Howard swap was similarly short on details. Any mention of concerns about Howard's health from those teams interested in trading for him didn't surface until July 5.

On exploring Steve Nash's arrival in L. Eric Pincus of Hoopsworld made more extensive mention of Howard's back in the Lakers' thinking:. As Pincus later points out , the Lakers are in something of a unique position to understand what's going on with Howard's rehab:. Robert Watkins, out of Los Angeles, is affiliated with the Lakers. But why would the Nets not be holding back? It would seem, then, that each prospective team's concerns over Dwight's back were related to the perceived value of the assets being relinquished.

That's not exactly uncommon or unreasonable—the less value that a team gives up in a trade in its own mind , the more risk it should be willing to accept back. Especially when one of the assets on offer Lopez was coming off a season in which he missed 61 games with a broken foot. Still, is that enough to explain Brooklyn's seemingly more haphazard approach?

Were the Nets more keen to make a splash now and deal with the consequences later? Was Howard's status as one of the most valuable players in the league enough reason for Brooklyn to turn a blind eye to his back? Or, perhaps, did they know something about Howard's injury that the Lakers didn't? And, if so, why would Brooklyn be privy to more information?

Of course, that all changed once the Cleveland Cavaliers withdrew from a complicated four-team deal and the Nets opted to re-sign restricted free agent Brook Lopez again, both per Wojnarowski.

With Lopez untradable until January, Brooklyn no longer had the flexibility or the available assets to fit Dwight into its immediate future. Interestingly enough, the Nets didn't seem particularly concerned about Lopez's recent foot problems, which had forced him to miss all but five games last season. Whether they had anything to do with the Magic's reluctance to make a deal remains uncertain, though it stands to reason that Hennigan would be gun-shy about taking on a player with those concerns attached.

Foot injuries have been known to cripple the careers of talented centers, most notably those of Bill Walton and Yao Ming. Not entirely unlike how talk of Howard's back as a deterrent, in historical terms, remained largely out of sight and out of mind in the rumor mill.

The intervening days saw the Rockets step up their efforts to bring Superman to Houston, going so far as to amnesty veteran forward Luis Scola. The Lakers, too, continued their pursuits, though this time reportedly with another team—the Cavs—serving as a third party, to take on Andrew Bynum, absorb the Magic's bad contracts and move young players and picks back to Orlando. Then, on July 16, Howard suddenly popped up on Twitter, but not in a public manner.

Markee Randolph , a former employee at Amway Arena who'd supposedly spoken to Dwight in person before per Jose Martinez of Complex Sports , released a string of direct messages that appear to come from Howard himself. Aside from thoughts on the Magic that Howard presumably offers here, he also mentions that he's focused on getting healthy and that he's "not fully recovered yet" to the extent that he "can't even run yet. This, even while rumors about fervent interest from the Lakers and the Rockets continued to swirl.

Were potential trade partners privy to this information? Surely, no organization at least, no well-run organization would dive into a Dwight Howard trade without doing its due diligence with regard to his injury. Or, as with the Nets, perhaps the Lakers and the Rockets were still willing to accept the risk that comes with acquiring an injured superstar, even though L. Were the "sources" even accurate to begin with?

Considering how reports have conflicted throughout this debacle, it's possible that different sources had different information. More importantly, was that actually Dwight who sent that rant via direct message? Randolph later attempted to vouch for the validity of the messages himself:. But he did see it and told me to stop posting it on twitter. ZOliver justmikeyhrc it was him cuz I know people who talk to him and said he called after all this went down. Either way, this bit of leaked correspondence adds an intriguing wrinkle to the whole saga.

If true, why would Dwight bother responding to someone with direct messages on Twitter, especially given the risk of such messages getting out into the public sphere anyway? And why wouldn't Dwight divulge such details to more reputable sources? Meanwhile, on July 17, Howard was spotted taking in a baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies from a luxury suite at Dodger Stadium.

Simers of the Los Angeles Times managed to catch up with Howard however briefly during the game. As he wrote:. A fan yelled to Howard, "Are you coming to L. To be fair, the preseason doesn't start until October 9, with the regular season tipping off three weeks later. That gives Howard another two months or so to rehab his back before the start of training camp wherever he may wind up and more than three months to get well before the games actually mean something. As such, there's still plenty of time for Dwight to heal, not to mention uncertainty as to whether Markee Randolph's "leaks" are trustworthy.

Since then, Dwight has seemingly softened his stance regarding his future home, with Jarrod Rudolph of RealGM reporting early on July 19 that Howard would be open to signing on long-term with the Lakers if the Magic were to send him to LA. The Lakers then became the front runners to land Howard's considerable services.

Dwight, too, said he'd be ready to go when the season starts this fall, though his agent insisted to ESPN's Ric Bucher on July 20 that he will test the free-agent waters next summer:.

Dwight's position has remained unchanged since the end of this past season. He fully intends to explore free agency at the end of next season, regardless of what team trades for him, including Brooklyn. What's still unclear, though, is why Dwight has been so reclusive, particularly since his surgery.

Why is it that one of the NBA's brightest and most gregarious personalities has said and done so little to enlighten fans and inquiring minds alike as to how his recovery is going, while other stars—like Dwyane Wade and Kyrie Irving —have been so transparent in their respective processes, particularly on Twitter? Even Derrick Rose , a former MVP who's hardly on Howard's level as far as affability and sociability in the public eye are concerned, went out of his way to discuss his recovery from a torn ACL in a short video on YouTube.

Then again, none of those three have been in the headlines as frequently or as prominently as Dwight has. He's the only one who's big and strong enough to play center in a league where true paint-patrolling big men of All-Star talent are as few and far between as they've been in decades.

He's also the only one of his wounded peers who's likely to be playing on a new team while dramatically shifting the balance of power in the NBA as a result.

Still, it's strange to see a seemingly friendly personality like Dwight Howard, a man who's shown such a strong desire to please his public in the past, suddenly steer clear of them, for the most part.

That little anyone has heard of the current condition of Howard's back has come not by choice from his camp, but rather from presumably unplanned run-ins with TMZ and T. Simers who's known for being the resident curmudgeon of the L. Times sports section as well as private messages turned over to the wiles of the Internet without his consent.

Might it have something to do with the maelstrom of criticism and doubt that he's endured or, rather, put himself through in recent months?