PHILADELPHIA -- Dwight Howard is irritating. He keeps saying he just wants to win. If that is his motivation, why did he insist he had to get out of Orlando?

Let's review. First pick in 2004 NBA draft by a bad team. Management very quickly surrounded him with a team of quality three-point shooters and penetrators.

By Howard's third season, the Magic were in the playoffs. They won 52 games and a playoff series in his fourth season.

They were 36-11 midway through the 2008-09 season, clearly the best team in the league before All-Star point guard Jameer Nelson tore his labrum. The Magic finished 59-23 with Rafer Alston at point guard. They got to the NBA Finals against the Lakers. With a healthy Nelson, a player the Lakers could not guard, the Magic may have won it all. Instead, they lost the series 4-1, including two overtime games.

They finished 59-23 again in 2009-10 and swept the first two rounds of the playoffs, beating the Hawks by 101 points in that 4-0 blitz. Some of their veteran players backed down against the Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals and the Magic lost, 4-2.

Still, this was one of the best teams in the NBA, a team that was feared because of Howard's defense and rebounding and all those shooters. The next season, the whole team played tentatively in a 4-2 first-round loss to the same Hawks. It was time to take stock in what they had done and try to recapture the best of it.

Instead, after the lockout in 2011-12, Howard demanded a trade and played like he didn't much care about what happened to his team. He was no longer the same defensive force. It could have been his back, which eventually needed surgery. Or he could have become a player who, at the first sign of a downturn, ran from it. Or he could have been listening to hangers-on who kept telling him that he needed a bigger market so they could get a piece of larger endorsement deals.

Howard is an athletic freak of nature. Or at least he was. His flying dunks, runs to the rim, strength, speed, rebounding and defensive instincts were the main reasons the Magic were an elite team. But he never took any responsibility for losses. It was always somebody else's fault.

Unlike young stars LeBron James and Kevin Durant, Howard has never worked hard enough on his weaknesses, has never spent his offseasons refining what he does well and has never seemed to care as much as he says he does.

His footwork is still clunky, his turnovers ridiculous, his free throw shooting worse than ever. And he plays as immaturely on the court as he acts immaturely off it. He complains too much to officials and at the wrong times. He got thrown out of his final game for the Lakers as his team was getting swept by the Spurs. Not exactly what you would expect from a self-described leader.

Howard blames the system, the coach or both, but never himself.

When he was challenged by Kobe Bryant to learn how to be a champion, he ran for Houston.

The Rockets will try to reprise what they had in Orlando by surrounding Howard with three-point shooters and creating a defense that will funnel the ball to the big man at the rim. It might work. It might even work really well.

But there will come a playoff series, a game, a moment when Dwight Howard will have to be the difference. He will have nowhere to run. The responsibility and result will be on him. I would bet against.