Orlando Magic superstar center Dwight Howard has taken his talents to Europe where he is entertaining and teaching some of the brightest NBA prospects and playfully participating in other sports as part of a six-city promotional tour for adidas.

Dwight most recently visited the adidas Eurocamp in Treviso, Italy. He spoke to approximately 50 of the prospective professional players at the camp about life in the NBA and the importance of dreaming big.

Dwight also learned and performed the Haka pregame ritual dance with the New Zealand Men’s National Rugby Union Under-20 team in front of the adidas Eurocamp crowd. Dwight is no stranger to the dance, having witnessed it before in international competitions and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. (Dwight won the gold medal there).

Check out the full video of Dwight participating in the Haka pregame dance:

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Up next, Dwight will be in Athens, Greece to speak to another group of young basketball players about how he achieved all of his goals of becoming a five-time NBA all-star and the league’s only winner of the Defensive Player of the Year award three straight years.

In Moscow, Dwight took in some sightseeing at Red Square, visited the adidas NBA store to promote the adiZero Crazy Light basketball shoe and met with fans at an NBA 5 United event at Luzhniki stadium with Utah Jazz power forward Andrei Kirilenko. Dwight, who was wearing an adidas T-shirt bearing his likeness, slapped high fives with the fans and put on a basketball demonstration for hundreds of fans dressed in No. 12 Magic jerseys and others in Lakers and Celtics gear.

Dwight began the six-city European tour in Germany at the adidas World Headquarters. Dwight helped open the new state of the art “Laces” building that will provide space for 1,700 employees. The new company building will be the central hub of the headquarters, and also features a biomechanical lab and sports research lab.

After the opening, Dwight met employees and a few lucky ones played with Dwight in various sports including tennis, soccer, golf and – of course – basketball. And while there, Dwight even learned a bit of German, telling the crowd, “Vielen Dank,” pronounced fittingly enough as “Feelin’ Dunk,” which means, “Thanks for having me.”

Dwight showed off his lefthanded tennis stroke, danced after a couple of soccer goals and even showed off his expanded shooting range by burying a couple of deep 3-pointers.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Headlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.