With Dwight Howard set to return to Orlando next week for the first time since becoming a member of the Los Angeles Lakers, the All-Star center wanted to set the record straight regarding remarks he made on his time with the Magic.

Howard told KCAL, a Los Angeles CBS affiliate, in an interview this week: “My team in Orlando was a team full of people who nobody wanted, and I was the leader, and I led that team with a smile on my face.”

“My statement was just to say that our team that I played with in Orlando, we were the underdogs,” Howard said after the Lakers’ 108-102 win over the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday night. “Nobody really talked about our team. It was underrated. Everybody overlooked us for the whole time I was there in Orlando and I hated that. We all hated that. We thrived off that. My comments were never to say anything disrespectful to those guys. Those were my teammates for years. They helped me become the player that I am today and we all got to the Finals because of that.”

via Dave McMenamin and Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com