Former NBA center Brendan Haywood says the locker room in Charlotte “hated Dwight Howard.”
The Hornets dealt Howard to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for Timofey Mozgov.
Just one year after trading for Dwight Howard the #Hornets are shipping him out and @bwood_33 says it has nothing to do with his ability on the court. pic.twitter.com/aQ8GYqqNsy
— SiriusXM NBA Radio (@SiriusXMNBA) June 20, 2018
“The locker room hated Dwight Howard,” said Haywood. “I’m not sure if Charlotte is rebuilding or if they’re just trying to get Dwight Howard out of there, but it was clear the locker room did not like Dwight Howard.”
“It’s simply because of how he goes about his business day-to-day in that locker room,” Haywood added. “Now he’s not the guy going around slapping people in the face. But [he’s] hard to deal with, doesn’t accept responsibility, cries a lot, has bad tendencies, awful body language. So all these things contributed to why he was shipped out of Charlotte … People I talked to behind the scenes, guys were just sick and tired of his act.”
The 32-year-old, eight-time NBA All-Star is joining his sixth team.
Per the Charlotte Observer:
I was speaking to a team source in midseason – this was months before the Howard trade – and he told me of the Hornets players’ frustration that Howard simply wouldn’t run the play that was called, sometimes in key last-minute situations.
Also, for a man with a superhero body, Howard’s screen-setting was often “terrible,” according to the source.
Howard and former coach Steve Clifford – who was always seen as “The Howard Whisperer” – also did not have nearly as perfect a relationship as was advertised and had at least one notable confrontation. And I saw firsthand some of the eye-rolling that Howard’s teammates did when they spoke about him.
