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Why was Dwight Howard afraid of dunking as a teenager? ...

When Dwight Howard was growing up in his early teens, the now near 7-footer was merely 5-11 and didn't get his first dunk until he was 14 or 15 years old, Howard said Thursday. "I really couldn’t dunk that much growing up," Howard said. "Once I started dunking, I just started doing crazy stuff and I’d practice them." Howard, who won the NBA slam dunk contest a the 2008 NBA All-Star weekend, said that he wasn't always defined by his rim-rattling stuffs. "I wasn’t a dunker," Howard said. "I was more of, they used to call me the ‘Glass Man.’ I used to do everything off the glass. I didn’t like dunking. I really didn’t. I said once I started dunking, then I’m not going to do anything else and I started dunking and then I didn’t want to do anything else (laughing). I messed myself up." Howard, who famously won the dunk contest by wearing a Superman cape, said he hopes this year's contestants do away with theatrics. "Everybody wants to see a good dunk contest," Howard said. "I don’t know if there are any new dunks they could do, but, some of the props that they had the last couple years, I think that should be X’d out a little bit. "The crazy stuff – the choir and all that. Hopefully there’s none of that. Just a good, old-fashioned dunk contest."