Howard: I never had issues with James Harden

By the end, the rocky relationship between Dwight Howard and James Harden was described as "cordially bad."

But Howard, now with the Atlanta Hawks, explained in a recent interview with ESPN's Tim MacMahon that there weren't any issues with his former Houston Rockets co-star.

"Well, sometimes things don't work like they should. I've never had an issue with James. I wish him nothing but the best. I just think the timing of everything was a little bit different," Howard said.

That proclamation, however, stands in stark contrast to how Howard and Harden operated. Not only did the two players reportedly maneuver to get one another traded off the team, Howard even admitted in May that there was indeed something that went wrong between the two All-Stars.

"I don't know (what went wrong with me and Harden)," Howard told ESPN's Jackie MacMullan in May. " ... I want to figure that out, too. I've been trying to wrap my mind around this season, what went wrong, and sometimes you can allow outside things to interrupt the circle. That probably happened with us."

Howard decided it was best to move on from Houston this summer, opting instead to join his hometown Hawks in free agency. That's where his focus lays as he progresses onto the next phase of his career.

"No offense to the people that I had around me, but I just wanted to start over, start fresh. Like I said, it's a new beginning, so I wanted everything to be fresh. I didn't want to bring any old baggage or anything from my past to this organization. They believe in me, this city believes in me, so I just wanted to make sure that when I'm out there on the court that I'm free, that I can give this city and this team everything that I've got."