The Whiteboard: Dwight Howard’s tour through NBA cities continues

Removed from his days as one of the top stars in the NBA, Dwight Howard has been traded again. How many stops does he have left?

I don’t find great joy in making fun of Dwight Howard. Dwight is a surefire Hall of Famer already, and that discounts the chance of him finding more team success as his career winds down. He clearly is not the same player he used to be.

That’s just life in the NBA. Still, that’s not to say Dwight is an ineffective player. He had a 30-30 game last season and averaged 16.6 points and 12.5 rebounds per game. Not many big men have his combination of size and strength.

All that said, Dwight is strange. He tends to get in squabbles with his teammates and he just says odd things. Like that time he gave a faux press release about the Hornets winning the 2018 title.

Because of these things, and probably partially because the NBA favors players who are more versatile on both ends than Dwight is, he’s on his sixth team in eight years. After leaving Orlando in 2012, Dwight has only lasted one year at each of his stops aside from his three-year tenure with the Houston Rockets.

The really pertinent question now that Dwight is at this stage in his career is, of course, how many teams can he visit and wreck havoc on before calling it a career? Although he’s been in the league since 2004, Dwight is just 32 years old. If he keeps up his pace since leaving Houston and plays for a new team each season, without repeating, he’ll hit 10 teams before his 38th birthday.

While that sounds like a tough number to reach, it’s not a record. It would only tie the record for the most teams any active player has played for, as Ish Smith has 10 teams under his belt. Four players–Chucky Brown, Jim Jackson, Tony Massenburg, and Joe Smith–are tied for the record with 12 stints.

If Dwight Howard wants to claim this record, he’s going to have to blow up team chemistry and move teams much faster in the next half-decade. It seems like a long shot, but this is Dwight’s game now.

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