SI

With decision looming, Dwight Howard's priorities remain a mystery

That performance now defines Howard in a negative way. In the years since, he has failed to impact the NBA on the court in the same way he did that night in
Ian Thomsen|
With decision looming, Dwight Howard's priorities remain a mystery
With decision looming, Dwight Howard's priorities remain a mystery

That performance now defines Howard in a negative way. In the years since, he has failed to impact the NBA on the court in the same way he did that night in Orlando. Not one of his teams has won a playoff series in the last three years. He hasn't acted like the star he can be so much as he has behaved like an actor who hopes to be a star.

Instead there are always these anonymously sourced stories -- which are not fabricated, which come from him and his camp -- about how he wants another coach, first in Orlando and now in Los Angeles. Why does he enable such negative issues to define him?

So much is at stake here, and it has much less to do with the decision he makes this week in public. It will have everything to do with the resolve he shows privately. It is not the shirt that defines the man.

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Ian Thomsen
IAN THOMSEN

Senior Writer, Sports Illustrated Sports Illustrated Senior Writer Ian Thomsen, who joined the magazine in 1998, is one of SI's top basketball scribes. Along with writing columns and features for SI, Thomsen is a frequent contributor to SI.com. Before joining SI, Thomsen spent six years in Europe as the sports columnist for the International Herald Tribune, the world's largest international English-language daily. While at the paper Thomsen wrote about an array of sports for a global audience, including the major world and European soccer tournaments, the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Olympic Games, Ryder Cups, Grand Slam tennis events, Grand Prix auto races and, very rarely, cricket. Thomsen, who graduated from Northwestern with a journalism degree in 1983, was a feature writer for The National Sports Daily during its short, expensive run of 1990-91. His first job was with The Boston Globe, where he covered Doug Flutie's Boston College Eagles and all three of the Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals of the 1980s. Thomsen was a feature writer at SI before taking on the NBA beat fulltime in 2000. With Luis Fernando Llosa and Melissa Segura, Thomsen covered the 2001 scandal of overaged Little League pitcher Danny Almonte and wrote the first SI cover story on Kobe Bryant in 1998. Thomsen lives with his wife and two children near Boston.

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