Dwight Howard Wanted to Avoid Being Hated Like LeBron James

Dwight Howard claims that all of his indecision, and the nauseating flip-flopping he did while in Orlando was to avoid becoming a villain in the eyes of some fans the way that LeBron did. Whoops! From ESPN: “While his long-term future remains uncertain, there is one thing Dwight Howard knows for sure — even after countless rounds of talks for his services between several teams over many months. ‘I don’t have any regrets, you know. I think everything happened the way that it was meant to happen,’ Howard said. ‘I really just wish some of the lies and some of the things being said didn’t come out the way it did, you know. But I have an opportunity to do something great here in L.A, and I can’t look back and think about everything that’s behind me.’ […] ‘That’s one of the lessons that I learned, you know. I can’t make everybody happy,’ Howard said. ‘And it was a tug of war between my feelings and the fans and everybody else and their feelings and what happened to LeBron. And I saw him — everybody hated him for leaving Cleveland and what he did,’ Howard said of LeBron James’ free-agent move from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat in 2010. ‘I never wanted anybody to hate me, you know. I wanted everybody to love me, you know, like me, for sticking around and doing what they wanted me to do. And making everybody else happy. And that was a valuable lesson for me, you know. I can’t make everybody happy.'”