The ongoing trade drama surrounding the Orlando Magic and Dwight Howard took another strange turn Wednesday afternoon. First, the organization refuted a Yahoo! Sports report that it had stopped listening to trade offers for Howard. "That's not where we are," Otis Smith, the team's President of Basketball Operations, told Josh Robbins. "What we’ve basically said is we don’t feel like we have to trade him today. We’re going to continue to look and explore opportunities. Actually, I don’t know if anything changed in my mind."
Ken Berger of CBS corroborated the Yahoo! story, adding that word around the league is "the Magic will once again revisit trade scenarios for Howard, but not until after All-Star weekend -- which is being held in Orlando Feb. 24-26." The trade deadline this season is set for March 15th.
In another development, Adrian Wojnarowski updated his initial Yahoo! report with word that Howard is unhappy in Orlando and reiterated his trade request Tuesday. A source said Howard is "not a happy camper," according to Wojnarowski's report.
If Howard indeed asked once again for a trade Tuesday, it'd cast a new light on his comments to Orlando media the day prior. "There's no place I would rather be than here in Orlando," Howard said Monday.
That Howard appears to have changed his tune once again is consistent with what one person "close to him" told Wojnarowski in an earlier report: "He runs hot and cold.... He just doesn't always know what he wants."
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