It’s nice to see that Dwight Howard is starting to get into the NBA Playoffs spirit.
With the Dallas Mavericks season ending on Monday night, Chandler Parsons has already begun recruiting Howard, saying (via ESPN’s Tim MacMahon) “I think he’s going to leave Houston, so why not come here?”
The slight problem is that Howard’s season with the Houston Rockets is not over. Not yet, anyway. On that note, it appears Howard is suddenly starting to take on the mantle of leadership.
We learned on Monday that Howard doesn’t want any pessimistic Rockets teammates to make the Game 5 trip to Oakland against the Golden State Warriors.
With that in mind, it’s not surprising to see he is not crazy about these comments from Parsons.
Dwight Howard on Chandler Parsons: pic.twitter.com/TiMwskryCD
— Mark Berman (@MarkBerman_) April 26, 2016
Howard’s focus should be on the Warriors and Wednesday’s Game 5. If he had limited his comments to something like, “My focus is on this basketball game. I’m not talking about anything after that,” there would be no problems with this.
Unfortunately, he said more than that, and a lot of what he actually did say is a little problematic.
If Parsons was still on the Rockets, of course, this would be fair game. Nobody in Houston’s locker room should be talking about the offseason until the playoffs are over. But Parsons is not with the Rockets anymore. His season ended on Monday night, so looking ahead to next year is completely fair game.
Also, it doesn’t exactly take a prophet to see that Howard is going to be leaving Houston after this year. Anyone who’s watched as much of five minutes of their series vs. Golden State (let alone the rest of the season) can clearly see that this team isn’t clicking and needs to be broken up.
Additionally, it’s true that nobody on the Rockets or Warriors should be looking ahead beyond Game 5. With that said, it’s completely fair for anyone else to look at what’s happened between these teams over the last two years and assume that Houston’s season is about to end.
Until his season actually ends, whenever that is, Dwight Howard would be well advised to not comment on anyone’s words about his future. Scolding anyone for saying that they feel he’ll leave the Rockets at season’s only opens himself up for more criticism and ridicule when he actually does go elsewhere.