Orlando Magic News: Dwight Howard Demands Trade To Brooklyn Nets Before The Draft

According to a report from Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski, what to do about Dwight Howard is at the top of the to-do list for newly minted General Manager Rob Hennigan.

Howard was alternately pushing for a trade and happy in Orlando leading up to the trade deadline depending on which day of the week he was asked by the media. He constantly changed his mind and the reports that swirled around him at the deadline were intense.

Eventually he signed an amendment to his contract that prevented him from opting out this year, and committing him to the Magic through 2013. It looks now as though that commitment was short lived.

Shortly after the trade deadline passed, Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy told reporters that Howard was lobbying for him to be fired; moments before Howard himself took the podium to address the media.

It was an underhanded move by the coach, and one that gave observers plenty of insight into the toxic atmosphere around the Magic.

Van Gundy was eventually let go at the end of the season, and Howard has maintained that he never asked for the coach to be fired. But before the Magic could get rid of Van Gundy, Howard literally checked out of the rest of the season.

On April 19, about a month after he signed the amendment, his agent announced that he would be having surgery to repair a herniated disk in his back that would cause him to miss the remainder of the season.

Since leaving for that surgery, he has not returned to the Magic, choosing to do his rehab in Southern California while his team was losing 4-1 to the Indiana Pacers in the first round of the playoffs.

Obviously something is broken between the Magic and Howard, and deciding whether it can be fixed or not is now in the hands of Hennigan. Now he has to decide what to do and how to do it in the next four days or risk losing Howard for nothing at the end of next season.