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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; Dwight Howard returned from injury to play the Celtics this week. (Andrew D. Bernstein/Getty Images)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By\u00A0Ben Golliver&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As if one Dwight Howard wasn't causing enough headaches for the Lakers, a second Dwight Howard has briefly moved to center stage in the never-ending\u00A0Tinseltown\u00A0drama.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dwight Howard, Sr. defended his son in an interview with the &lt;em&gt;Atlanta Journal-Constitution&lt;/em&gt;, saying that Lakers guard Kobe Bryant was wrong to pressure Dwight Jr. to play with a shoulder injury and criticizing coach Mike D'Antoni for not intervening.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI told him before he said it publicly, \u2018It\u2019s your career. No person can say what you need to do or not do. You can\u2019t worry about what Kobe or anybody else says,\u2019\u201D the elder Howard said. \u201CNobody can say what Kobe said -- that\u2019s stepping into another man\u2019s shoes. I understand what Kobe was trying to do, but he went about it the wrong way. He\u2019s trying to win a championship. But Dwight has to tell Kobe, \u2018I appreciate your opinion, but that doesn\u2019t matter. We\u2019re two men on this team. We need to be reasonable about this.\u2019\u201D&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dwight Sr. said he believed Bryant was trying to motivate his son, but that the advice was misplaced, adding: \u201CThe problem is the coach. (D\u2019Antoni) needs to step in and say, \u2018You guys have got to be quiet. We\u2019re trying to secure something here. Dwight is probably looking at the coach, thinking, \u2018What are you going to do?\u2019 I promise, if that had been Stan Van Gundy, that wouldn\u2019t have happened. (Howard) wouldn\u2019t have been admonished publicly. I think the coach has a lot to do with who controls Kobe\u2019s mouth right now.\u201D&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Howard recently missed three games with a right shoulder injury.\u00A0Earlier this week, Bryant said the Lakers \"don't have time\" for the injury to heal and that \"some urgency\" was needed. Bryant later said that he wasn't intentionally trying to prod Howard to play through an injury.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Following Bryant's comments, Howard returned to the court for games against the Celtics and Bobcats. He did so after\u00A0responding to Bryant's comments by saying, \"He's not a doctor, I'm not a doctor,\" and that, \"This is my career, this is my future, this is my life.\"&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Los Angeles Daily News&lt;/em&gt; reported Saturday that the Lakers did their best to brush off Dwight Sr.'s comments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CThat\u2019s cool,\u201D D\u2019Antoni said. \u201CHe\u2019s his father. He should defend his son. But I thought we had that in Memphis. We\u2019re good.\u201D&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI don\u2019t want to get into it,\u201D Howard said. \u201CMy dad is a grown man. That\u2019s how he feels. We\u2019ll leave it at that.\u201D&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CIt\u2019s really not that big of a deal,\u201D Bryant said. \u201CIn Boston, they made something out of nothing. There wasn\u2019t anything I said that was out of the ordinary or nothing I said before talking to him. They made a really big deal out of something that is really nothing.\u201D&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Note: D'Antoni's reference to Memphis concerned a team meeting in which Bryant, Howard and company reportedly discussed any underlying issues.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It must be exceedingly difficult for Dwight Sr. to watch his son catch grief from all sides month after month, year after year. The paternal, protective instinct doesn't magically go away just because his son happens to be a giant of a man making millions of dollars. Dwight Sr. probably felt like Bryant was bullying his son into a bad decision that sacrificed the long-term in favor of the short-term and he probably felt like D'Antoni owed it to his players to protect them from each other. His son has played through pain all season long and has been one of the NBA's most durable superstars during his career. Dwight Sr. surely understands his son's commitment to the game better than most outsiders and likely realizes his son doesn't have anyone else standing up for him these days.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That said, this isn't AAU basketball where whatever a star player's father thinks carries a lot of weight. This is the NBA, where as Bryant stated earlier this week, the only thing that matters is winning and where players will be pushed harder than they've ever been pushed to make winning a reality. Howard probably feels like the whole world is against him right now, but it's his responsibility to let Dwight Sr. know that comments like these won't win him any friends or sympathizers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In fact, Dwight Sr. has done more harm than good by confirming an apparent divide between Howard and others in the Lakers locker room at a time when the team should be pulling together to make a united, albeit somewhat desperate, push for the playoffs. The fact that Dwight Sr. spoke up also unintentionally reinforced some of the negative perceptions that Dwight Jr. can't shake: that he's indecisive, overly goofy and afraid of commitment. Behind each of those criticisms lies a root cause -- a lack of maturity -- and here Howard's father is appearing to fight his battles for him.\nFrankly, his father's intervention is probably a little embarrassing for Howard, or at least it should have been.&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/nba/point-forward/2013/02/10/dwight-howard-kobe-bryant-lakers-mike-dantoni>