NBAWeird But True

Dwight Howard Wants Kids To Hate Him Too, So He’ll Skip His Annual Youth Basketball Camp

Somewhere, Dwight Howard is sitting in a spooky mansion, at the top of a cliff, with lightning crackling in the ominous background, in a big arm chair, wearing a monocle and a black cape, just scheming about how he can get mankind to hate him even more.

I’m really convinced at this point Dwight Howard will become the most hated player in the NBA. Today, D12 found a way to make new demographic of people (little people) absolutely despise him. The Orlando Sentinel is reporting Howard will skip out on his annual youth basketball camp.

According to an official at his annual basketball day camp for children, Dwight Howard will not attend this year, and families who paid the camp’s $199 registration fee were sent e-mail messages Monday to inform them Howard will remain in Southern California in order to continue rehabilitating his back.

As the Sentinel points out, Dwight appears to be in good enough health to make appearances at Dodgers games, but can’t attend his own youth basketball camp.

The campers will still be given the same instruction, but won’t get to meet Dwight — which is the obvious, major attraction of these kinds of camps.

Taking Howard’s place will be the Magic’s 2012 first round pick Andrew Nicholson. No disrespect to Nicholson, who should be a fine rookie out of St. Bonaventure University, but he’s no Dwight Howard.

Campers will also be given this package:

The ProCamps official said campers will receive a Howard autograph, a ticket to a Magic home game and a gift bag from adidas, which sponsors Howard. But the official also said registrants can receive refunds if they decide not to attend because of Howard’s absence.

Because we didn’t already have enough reasons to hate Dwight Howard. I guess if you’re going to make the entire world hate you though, you’ve gotta go all out. I’m sure there were some small children naive enough to think that Dwight Howard would re-sign with Orlando, or that they’d stay loyal to him even if he left the Magic. Yep, you can officially cross them of the list.

So, if you’re keeping score, the only people that don’t hate Dwight Howard right now are middle-aged women, undecided voters, and LeBron James.

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