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NBA FINALS: MAGIC v LAKERS

June 14, 2009

Dwight Howard

ORLANDO, FLORIDA: Game Five

Los Angeles Lakers - 99
Orlando Magic - 86

Q. How would you summarize this game and this season and your performance?
DWIGHT HOWARD: Well, as a team I think we started out great. We kind of just -- they made a run, and instead of being the team that played like we did all season, we kind of started to hold our heads down, and they went on from there. But I think we had a great season this year. We did a lot of things that nobody in this room besides me and my teammates and a couple other staff members believed we could do. So there's no need for us to hold our heads. We came a long way as a team, as a unit. I think our personnel came a long way from the beginning of the season until now, and looking forward to next season.

Q. Next year do you think that you will make the adjustment to be able to return and finally win it?
DWIGHT HOWARD: I think so. We understand what we have to do. I think tonight you've got to give a lot of credit to the Lakers. They came in, they played extremely hard the whole game, even when we was ahead. They kept fighting and they picked it up, and they wanted it. They played like they were a team that was hungry for a championship.
Kobe led the way, but I think Trevor and Lamar did an excellent job the whole series. Trevor, he stepped his game up. When he was on our team, he couldn't shoot the ball as well as he can now. Now he's one of the best three-point shooters on their team. He's slashing, scoring, playing great defense on Turkoglu, so I think he was probably the main reason, him and Lamar, for the championship.

Q. The Magic had an extraordinary season, there's no question about it. Coach Van Gundy talked about the issue of experience not mattering in The Finals, that it's just a game and it's two teams that basically qualified. Can you talk about, however, the experience that the Magic certainly are going to take from this series and how you can build on that for next season? And does that experience matter to you as a young player and an emerging superstar in the league?
DWIGHT HOWARD: I think it's great to play in The Finals, but being a player, it's no different than the game tonight than any other game except the stakes are higher - either you win a championship or you lose. The rims are still the same, the floor doesn't change. There's nothing that changes about playing in The Finals.
Were they the better team in the series? Yeah, that's why they're the champs. What we can learn from this experience is that we have to be able to play 48 minutes. You know, the whole game. We can't take off any possessions. I think that's how they won. They didn't take any possessions off. They kept the pressure on us, and like I said, they played like a team that was hungry for a championship.
There's a lot of little lessons that we can learn from this series and from the season. The games we won, the series that we won during our playoff run, we gave a great effort for 48 minutes. Tonight we didn't have that same effort and same fight that we had during the whole playoffs, and they did.
They did an excellent job. I can't take nothing away from them. Congrats to Kobe, getting his fourth ring. He led the way. Playing against him, playing with him all summer, he inspired their team, he inspired me and my teammates to grow and want to be a champion. You know, congrats to the Lakers.

Q. After the game when the Lakers were celebrating, you and Jameer kind of stayed out there and you wanted to soak it in a little bit --
DWIGHT HOWARD: No, you can't soak in a loss.

Q. Did you want to use it as kind of motivation going into the summer?
DWIGHT HOWARD: No, what I just told Jameer is just look at it, just see how they're celebrating, and it should motivate us to want to get in the gym, want to get better, just to see those guys celebrating. It's like what I told Jameer, we was right there at our goal. Our goal was in reach. We were three games away from having the NBA title.
So I told him we had a great season, but next year we've got to be even more hungrier to want to be champions. It does hurt, but I'd rather sit there and watch it than go in the locker room and feel sorry for myself. It hurts. It hurts a lot, but you can learn a lot from losing. Sometimes you've got to lose to win.

Q. You just mentioned learning experiences, what you've learned. How will you be a different or better player if you can get back here again personally?
DWIGHT HOWARD: Well, I can't get frustrated. I think this series, a lot of things didn't go my way, and I got a little frustrated, and I think that's one of the biggest areas that I can improve on. I know my game will continue to get better because I'm an extremely hard worker. I work on my game every day. So I'm not worried about that part.
Just mentally, just being able to stay in the moment, staying in the game, bad calls or not touching the ball, the ball is not going in when you shoot it. Some of that stuff is frustrating at times. But the great players always find a way. Kobe missed some shots tonight, but he kept shooting the ball and he made some unbelievable shots.
The only thing you can do is look back on the season, look back on what we did as a team, personally look become at what I did, just try to come back next year with the same fire and try to accomplish our goal.

Q. You talked about having a realistic sense about how hard it is to get back here, guys you know personally who only got here once. That being said, how much confidence do you have that you are going to have more shots at this?
DWIGHT HOWARD: I have a lot of confidence. I'm 23 years old. God willing, hopefully I have a long career without any major injuries. You know, I've got a great feeling that we'll have a chance to be back. There's no doubts in my mind about that. Kobe didn't make it last year, they came back this year and they got the job done. I think it's a great steppingstone for us.
Like I said earlier, nobody believed that we could even get this far. Everybody said at the beginning of the season we probably weren't going to make the playoffs, and look at us now. We're here in The Finals. We came up short, but we learned a lot, and it's a blessing to be able to play in The Finals.

Q. Playing against Lamar, Pau and Andrew Bynum, is that the best front line you've faced in the playoffs? Did they take away part of your game, especially the dunks, during the series?
DWIGHT HOWARD: I think if you watched the series, the whole team took away the dunks. It wasn't just those three guys. They did an excellent job of pushing me out, not letting me catch it deep, but their whole team, their plan was not to let me get the ball up and dunk and keep me away from the basket as much as possible and force me to make plays by passing the ball out to my teammates. I think from the first game to tonight, their coaching staff, Phil and the coaching staff, prepared those guys for playing against our post play.
They did a great job. Nothing to say but props to Andrew Bynum. He's coming back from an injury he had last year to having a great season. He did a good job.
I'm sad, but I'm happy to see that some of the guys I enjoyed playing against got a championship.

Q. Things got a little rocky in the Boston series and Stan has been taking heat really all year long, but you guys got past that, got this team to The Finals. How do you see you and him as being kind of the partnership going forward to lead this team?
DWIGHT HOWARD: We never had any major problems, me and Stan. We've had disagreements, but so does every player, every coach. Everybody has disagreements, but Stan has motivated me and he's pushed me to the level that I am today, and I think me and him are going to get stronger and better. I'm looking forward to next season. I know he's beat up about tonight's game, but Stan has done an excellent job of keeping our team together, motivating us, just making us a better team from the first day of training camp until now. He's made us a better team, he's made us stronger, kept us together. And he's a reason why, one of the main reasons why we made it to where we're at today.

End of FastScripts

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