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Howard admits rushing back for Lakers, wishes world knew 'how serious the back injury was'

Lucy Nicholson / REUTERS

Unfortunately for Dwight Howard, his lone season with the Lakers will go down as a failure.

Despite championship-caliber expectations, a star-studded team featuring Howard, Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and Pau Gasol squeaked into the playoffs before being swept by the Spurs in the first round.

What many people forget about that season, however, was that Howard was coming off of back surgery, and in a recent interview with Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski, the big man admitted that he probably rushed back to the court too soon:

I probably should've waited longer, but I don't regret playing right away. I wish the information could've come across to the world about how hurt I really was, how serious the back injury was, but I never thought it really did.

Howard underwent a lumbar microdiscectomy - surgery to address a herniated disc - on April 20, 2012. To his credit, he was in the Lakers lineup on opening night of the 2012-13 season, and played 76 games that season (second on the team to Bryant's 78 games played).

Howard rarely looked healthy with the Lakers, and his departure via free agency the following summer forever tarnished his reputation among fans in L.A., but no one can deny that he played through pain and still managed to post some pretty impressive numbers.

Howard averaged 17.1 points, a league-leading 12.4 rebounds, 2.4 blocks, 1.4 assists and 1.1 steals with the Lakers, below his career standards, but impressive nonetheless.

Only last season - his first with the Houston Rockets - did Howard finally begin to look like the Howard of old, and the eight-time All-Star says he's even healthier now:

I have to do it for 82 games, and physically, I'm in a better place to do it. There were spurts last season, spurts in Los Angeles, where I felt like I was doing a lot. The back injury took a lot out of me, but I'm in a better place now mentally and physically to carry a team.

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