Hey, Magic fans, Dwight Howard may finally win a championship in Orlando! | Commentary

Forgive me, fellow Central Floridians, for what I am about to write:

I have — clearing my throat — actually found myself rooting for Dwight Howard during the NBA playoffs.

Not only that, but — taking a deep breath — I am genuinely OK with Dwight winning a championship with the spoiled, hated, “We don’t build championship rosters, we steal our superstars from other teams” Los Angeles Lakers.

Hey, Dwight always said he was going to win a championship in Orlando.

And now, ironically, he’s just a few wins away.

Of course, this isn’t how it was supposed to happen. More than a decade ago, Dwight was one of the biggest superstars in the NBA and purportedly going to lead the Orlando Magic to a franchise-first championship. Now, he is a role-playing reserve center for the Lakers, trying to win his first title inside of Orlando’s Disney bubble.

I guess this is just another example of the weird, whacked-out universe we are living in today. As Florida Gators football coach Dan Mullen said earlier in the week of this pandemic-plagued sports season: “It’s like Bizarro World, right? Like Bizarro Jerry if you ever saw that Seinfeld episode.”

Except this is Bizarro Dwight — and, yes, us Orlandoans have relived the episode over … and over … and over again. It’s about a one-time pampered, prima donna superstar who got a beloved coach fired, forced his way out of Orlando and somehow, someway morphed into the ultimate team player willing to accept the most menial role to help the Lakers win a championship.

Nikola Vucevic was acquired by the Orlando Magic in the Dwight Howard trade seven years ago and has turned into the anti-Dwight —  an all-star who realizes how good he has it in Orlando.

I still remember that night 11 years ago when Dwight’s Magic were eliminated by Kobe’s Lakers in Game 5 of the NBA Finals right here in Orlando. After the game, Dwight and his best friend, Magic point guard Jameer Nelson, solemnly sat alone on the Magic bench watching the Lakers’ hug and high five and hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy on Orlando’s home floor.

Asked afterward why they wanted to watch the Lakers’ postgame celebration, Jameer said, “We wanted to experience what it felt like [to lose in the Finals] because we never want to feel this way again.”

Said Dwight: “This is going to make me even hungrier to get back to the Finals.”

And, now, 11 years and seven teams later, Dwight has finally made it back to the promised land. His fall from grace was one of the most rapid and precipitous in recent NBA history. He’s gone from the next Bill Russell to the next Bill Cartwright. During that run to the Finals in 2009, Dwight’s Magic disposed of LeBron’s Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals, prompting me to write one of the dumbest sports columns in modern journalism history. The headline of the column: “Dwight, not LeBron, is the future of the NBA.”

As I like to say, “Doctors bury their mistakes; sports columnists only print ours.”

LeBron, of course, has gone on to become one of the greatest players of all time and Dwight has gone on to become one of LeBron’s designated rebounders and screen-setters. And, astonishingly, Dwight, the one-time aloof, egotistical superstar, has actually accepted his dull, diminished role.

Then again, he didn’t have much of a choice, considering his career was pretty much dead. He has been on five teams in the last two years and was waived by both Brooklyn and Memphis. The Lakers picked him up off the scrap heap after center DeMarcus Cousins went down with a season-ending knee injury. Even then, the Lakers would only sign him if Dwight humbled himself and agreed to a non-guaranteed contract.

The Orlando Magic were eliminated from the playoffs Saturday and their historic season is over, but they vowed to keep fighting for social justice.

And, so, Dwight is now just a banging backup center who averaged a pedestrian 7.5 points and 7.3 rebounds during the regular season, played 19 minutes per game, averaged only four shots and made an abysmal 51.4% from the free-throw line (some things never change). However, he has been more than willing to do the dirty work to help the Lakers win just as he did in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals against the Denver Nuggets when he scored 13 points and defensively frustrated Nuggets center Nikola Jokic.

“He’s contributing a great deal,” says Stan Van Gundy, Dwight’s former coach in Orlando who is now an analyst for TNT and NBA TV. “Dwight just plays very physically and that’s what he brings to the Lakers more than anything. He’s a physical presence inside and the Lakers don’t really have another guy who does that. If you look at the box scores every game; Dwight’s picking up four or five fouls and he’s only playing 13 or 14 minutes. He’s just throwing his body around and knocking people around. That’s what the Lakers need, and Dwight deserves a lot of credit for doing whatever the Lakers need to do to win.”

The common consensus when the Magic lost to the Lakers in the 2009 championship series was that Dwight and the Magic would be back in the Finals regularly during the next few seasons. We all know now that it never happened. Dwight tried and ultimately succeeded in getting Stan fired and then forced the Magic to trade him.

But even all these years later, Dwight still draws inspiration from the Magic losing in the Finals.

“It never leaves my mind,” Howard told Sports Illustrated recently of that night in 2009 when he sat stone-faced with Jameer and watched the Lakers celebrate their championship on the Magic’s home court. “I had a chance to get there [to the Finals] once. I always promised myself, if I had a chance to get back there, I would give my teammates everything that I’ve got.”

Forgive me, fellow Central Floridians, for what I am about to write:

I am rooting for Dwight Howard to finally win a championship.

It’s only appropriate that it should happen in Orlando, where he remains the greatest player in Magic history,