Despite current drama, Atlanta Hawks need to stand with Dwight Howard

If there was an NBA season and it didn’t have drama pertaining to current Atlanta Hawks center Dwight Howard, would it even be an NBA season? The world may never know, because once again national media has gone out of its way make the future Hall of Famer a headline.

At this point, the continuous negative image surrounding Dwight has gotten out of hand. This persona of Howard being a selfish player has gotten to the point of being blasphemous. Everyone understands the situation with the Orlando Magic was never even close to being handled properly, but that part of his career is now five years in the past.

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The situations with the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets ended with overblown negativity as well. Dwight Howard has been handled so poorly that there has never really been another way for him to react to said situations.

Considering Howard never did anything particularly wrong in the first place, it’s a wonder how he’s gotten all the blame whenever anything goes wrong.

Dwight then came home to Atlanta in a bodacious attempt to finally have peace while playing basketball.

For most of the season he was at peace. Howard quietly had arguably his best individual season since leaving Orlando. Howard managed to set a career high, and a Hawks record, in field goal percentage at 63 percent, and had an effective field goal percentage of the same rate, which was 4th best in the NBA.

Howard also ranked 2nd in the NBA in offensive rebounding percentage and 4th in defensive rebounding percentage. Dwight managed to hold the 5th best defensive rating and the 10th most defensive win shares in the league. So what exactly is there to ridicule Dwight about?

Well, Howard’s point production was down to 13.5 points per game, the lowest since his rookie season. Also having the lowest minutes played (29.7) and field goal attempts (8.3) per game, this all translated to a 43-39 record for the Hawks.

As usual, people pointed the blame towards Dwight. Without even considering that by the end of the season Atlanta’s lineup was featuring four different starters than from a year ago. There were many other factors in the Hawks’ mediocrity than simply Dwight doing what he does.

Then, after the Hawks’ season was ended by the Washington Wizards, player exit interviews took place. There, Dwight mentioned his dissatisfaction with being sat on the bench for practically entire fourth quarters. From there, the same old story told by media with Dwight arose again. Now Dwight is a cancer to the team, now Dwight is selfishly complaining about minutes, now the Hawks are done with Dwight.

The situation arose from Mike Budenholzer continually benching Dwight Howard in key stretches of a game, sometimes even full fourth quarters. Even in games where Dwight was playing extremely well and would be needed in crucial situations, Budenholzer would decide to keep him out of the game during crunch-time.

Throughout the majority of the season, it had been all smiles and a peaceful setting for Howard, despite times of struggle. The Hawks play great basketball whenever Dwight is included in the team’s offense, unfortunately that was something that this Hawks team vitally struggled with. Like it or not, Dwight Howard will be an Atlanta Hawk next season, and now is not the time to give up on a player who loves this city and loves this team.

The team will obviously need to work together to make sure next year Howard contributes to the team’s victories. A large portion of this burden will fall on point guard Dennis Schröder and his overall ability to run the offense and get everyone on the team involved. The team will grow and get better, barring the free agent decisions of Tim Hardaway Jr. and Paul Millsap.

Despite whatever perception people have on the continuous roller-coaster ride of his career, every indication shows that Dwight Howard is still completely dedicated to the Atlanta Hawks. Any dilemma that happens with Howard and Budenholzer, or the rest of the team, will hopefully be settled throughout the offseason. We as Hawks fans have no reason to not be behind Dwight 100 percent of the way, because he is with us 100 percent of the way.

Next: Atlanta Hawks 2016-17 Season Review: Dwight's Homecoming

Take a break from making judgments based on what media tries to tell, and let’s be supportive of the team that we love so dearly. That’s the least we can do as Hawks fans.

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