Once one of the leagueās most dominant forces, Dwight Howard is moving on to his sixth team and fourth in four seasons.
A long time ago, in an NBA far, far away, Dwight Howard was an MVP candidate and the most dominant force in the league outside of LeBron James.
Actually, it wasnāt thatĀ long ago that Howard was winning three consecutive Defensive Player of the Year awards and leading the Orlando Magic past LeBron into the NBA Finals, but it sure feels that way given how the big manās career has played out.
Once a fearsome beast, Howard is now a punchline and a guy who has been traded for Miles Plumlee and Timofey Mozgov in consecutive summers (amazingly, both times on June 20). He has gone from the Houston Rockets to the Atlanta Hawks to the Charlotte Hornets to the Brooklyn Nets since 2016.
Howard wasnāt even bad this past season in Charlotte. He put up 16.6 points and 12.5 rebounds per game, and the Hornets were a better team with him on the floor. He even had a 30/30 game! Heās not the player he once was, and he still insists on posting up too much when heās not any good at it, but he was helpful.
Of course, itās not that simple with Dwight, and weāre already getting reports of his teammates disliking him:
Thatās why new Hornets president Mitch Kupchak dealt a useful Howard for a useless Mozgov (a Kupchak signee in 2016!), two future second-round picks and cash despite Howardās expiring $23.82 million contract and Mozgovās $16.72 million owed for 2019-20. Kupchak had already dealt with the Howard sideshow once in Los Angeles, and he clearly was determined not to deal with it again. The deal saves the Hornets a chunk of change this year, so they also have that going for them.
Things ending poorly with a team has become a theme with Howard. We can go all the way back to his time with the Orlando Magic and the awkward press conference with Stan Van Gundy:
Howard clashed with Kobe Bryant in LA and James Harden in Houston. Signing with his hometown Hawks was supposed to represent a fresh start, but his teammates hated him there, too. ESPNās Zach Lowe and Kevin Arnovitz relayed multiple anecdotes on Loweās podcast after the Hawks traded Howard to the Hornets, with Arnovitz calling Howard āa downerā and Lowe saying he heard Hawks players were āscreaming with jubilation into their phonesā when the deal went down.
And now, exactly one year after Howardās trade to the Hornets, Charlotte is flipping him to Brooklyn (though the deal canāt be consummated until after the July moratorium is over). Itās rather ironic given Howardās initial trade demand to the Magic involved a desire to go to the Nets. Except now the Nets are a rebuilding team trying to claw their way back to relevancy rather than a team trying to make big splashes in order to make a championship run.
Howard is still āonlyā 32 years old and can help the Nets get back to relevancy, but he himself has become mostly irrelevant. Brooklyn has a promising 20-year-old center in Jarrett Allen already in place, so who knows how much Howard will see the floor. Will Howard cause a stink if he doesnāt get his desired minutes? Given his track record, he might cause a stink anyway in that young locker room no matter what happens.
Howard will likely move on to another team after his contract is up, if the Nets even keep him around all season. From there itās hard to see any team making a long-term commitment to him, so weāll probably continue to see him jump around from team to team the rest of his career.
There will be debates about whether Howard should be a Hall of Famer, though the answer is definitely yes. Itās easy to forget just how dominant he was for a lengthy stretch at the beginning of his career. But despite remaining relatively productive, the perception of Howard has been trending down since leaving Orlando, aided by self-inflicted problems, a back injury and a league that has gone away from players of his ilk.
Howardās legacy is a complicated one, which is a downer, just like the player himself.