Dwight Howard: Beef with Kobe Bryant was made up by media

Dwight Howard's tumultuous tenures with the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets have been well documented. 

Most notably, his up-and-down relationships with those team's star players — Kobe Bryant and James Harden.

But Howard, now a member of the Charlotte Hornets, has mostly maintained the stance that the drama with both players was blown out of proportion.

When asked Sunday on Twitter why he "beefed" with Bryant in L.A., Howard responded:

Howard has often downplayed what went down during his lone season in Laker Land, which ended with a first-round sweep at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs as Bryant was sidelined with a torn Achilles. Howard left for Houston, but the story lines continued.

“I mean people are always going to talk (about my decision to leave). I had a good time in L.A. It didn’t end how everybody wanted it to. Life happens. Things happen, and I’ve moved forward from it," Howard said after his infamous dust-up with Bryant as the Lakers hosted the Rockets in the 2014 season opener. "Hopefully the fans and everybody else can and focus on their team … I think it’s over with. I made a decision for myself.”

This March, Howard told The Undefeated that there "was never an issue" between he and Bryant.

"The same thing I told (Bryant) is the same thing I told Steve Nash and every one of those guys. I want to learn from them. I want to take as much knowledge as I can from y’all," Howard said. "One day when y’all out the league and I’m still playing, I can give that knowledge to somebody else and I can keep this thing going. I’ve never had an issue with (Bryant)."

Bryant — who referred to Howard as a "teddy bear" and said you "can't help but like him" after that 2014 altercation — told USA TODAY Sports' Sam Amick in February of 2015 that parts of the Lakers' culture made Howard "uncomfortable."

"I tried teaching Dwight. I tried showing him. But the reality is that when you have a perception of what it is to win a championship — and most perceptions of what it's like to win are a very outgoing, very gregarious locker room where you pick each other up and you're friends all the time. That's the perception," Bryant said. "And I think that's what his perception was of what the idea is. But when he saw the reality of it, it made him uncomfortable. And it's very tough to be able to fight through that, to deal with that challenge. And I don't think he was willing to deal with that uncomfortable and combative nature."

Follow USA TODAY Sports' AJ Neuharth-Keusch on Twitter @tweetAJNK

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