Zach Kram
Dwight Howard will be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend, part of an eight-person class of basketball luminaries. Howard is a deserving first-ballot entrant — an eight-time All-Star, eight-time All-NBA honoree and three-time Defensive Player of the Year.
Though it’s difficult to call a first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee underrated, that label applies to the newest center in Springfield, Massachusetts. As of 2021, Howard was one of 26 players in NBA history with at least five first-team All-NBA nods. The other 25 were named to the league’s 75th Anniversary Team that year. Howard was not.
The other players with three or more first-team All-NBA appearances who didn’t make the 75th Anniversary Team predated the 3-point era, meaning Howard is the only modern player with anywhere near his level of accolades not to get the honor.
But Howard’s game had warts. In the same mold as other dominant centers such as Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O’Neal, he was a terrible free throw shooter (career 57%). He committed twice as many turnovers as assists. He was an inefficient scorer in the post, despite often demanding the ball down low: We don’t have good tracking data from Howard’s prime, but since 2013-14, he ranks 62nd out of 65 players with at least 1,000 post-ups in points per play, according to GeniusIQ.
But Howard’s historical underrating seems more a reflection of how his career played out.
Contrast Howard with Robert Parish, a paragon of longevity. The two Hall of Fame centers have similar counting stats and a similar career wins above replacement total, per Basketball-Reference. But they reached those ultimate outcomes via different paths: Howard peaked and fell quickly, while Parish took the slow-and-steady approach.
First 8 seasons
Howard: 78.6 WAR
Parish: 54.3 WAR
Rest of career
Howard: 27 WAR
Parish: 55.4 WAR
The differences in peak value meant Howard made eight career All-NBA teams, and Parish made just two (one second, one third). However, Parish continued to produce throughout his 30s and won three titles with the 1980s Celtics (plus a fourth as an end-of-bench player for the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls), so he made the 75th Anniversary Team while Howard missed out.
Howard, conversely, accrued very little value over the second half of his career. He was an All-Star for the last time at age 28, and in his 30s, he transformed from the most-sought-after center in the league to an NBA vagabond. Howard changed teams for each of his last six seasons, toiling away in relative anonymity in the Southeast Division for half that time before a successful stint back in Los Angeles, where Howard and JaVale McGee formed a center rotation that allowed Anthony Davis to play his preferred power forward position. Either Howard or McGee started 18 of the Los Angeles Lakers’ 21 playoff games en route to the 2019-20 title.
The long, undistinguished final arc of Howard’s career masks just how extraordinarily high he climbed at his peak. (And I don’t mean how high he literally climbed, although he did that too, with his “sticker dunk” at the 2007 slam dunk contest.)
Howard is one of 19 players in NBA history with five consecutive first-team All-NBA nods. The only other centers on that list are Shaq and George Mikan. The only other 21st-century players are LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Giannis Antetokounmpo, O’Neal, Luka Doncic and Kevin Durant — who, with the exception of the young Doncic, are acknowledged as top-25 players in NBA history.
Critics would contend that Howard so thoroughly dominated the All-NBA voting because of a lesser caliber of competition in that era. This idea has some merit: Though the center landscape wasn’t quite as barren during Howard’s reign as it would be half a decade later — the All-NBA centers in 2015-16 were DeAndre Jordan, DeMarcus Cousins and Andre Drummond — the second- and third-team All-NBA centers behind Howard were Amar’e Stoudemire (three times), Yao Ming (twice), Suns-era Shaq, Andrew Bogut, Al Horford, Andrew Bynum and Tyson Chandler. There are good players on that list, but few Hall of Famers.
But Howard’s awards weren’t just a reflection of positional scarcity. His MVP finishes in those five seasons were second, fourth, fourth, fifth and seventh; he was a legitimate top-five player for his entire peak, regardless of position.
Over the first half of his career, Howard was a two-way force. He was always available — in his first seven seasons, Howard played 82 games five times and never fewer than 78 — and he is one of four players with at least three Defensive Player of the Year trophies (and the only player with three in a row). Howard was worlds better than the other three — Rudy Gobert, Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace — on offense; Howard finished his career with more points than Mutombo and Wallace combined.
Howard’s strengths also helped the Orlando Magic craft a modern style before it was popular. With shooters such as Rashard Lewis, Hedo Turkoglu and Ryan Anderson filling the frontcourt next to a dominant center, the late-aughts Magic were ahead of their time. During Howard’s five-year peak, which coincided with Stan Van Gundy’s five years as Orlando’s coach, the Magic led the league in 3-point attempt rate every season, per Cleaning the Glass, while their defense allowed the lowest rate of shots at the rim in four of those seasons. (Orlando finished second in that stat in the fifth year.)
Van Gundy and Howard’s teammates at the time credit Howard’s presence in the paint for facilitating that approach. While his teammates let fly from deep, Howard led the NBA in dunks for six consecutive seasons, from 2005-06 through 2010-11.
This collection of Magic players broke onto the national stage in the 2009 Eastern Conference finals, when Howard helped author one of the great playoff upsets of the 21st century. Orlando thoroughly beat the 66-win Cleveland Cavaliers, who had gone 8-0 in their first two playoff series, and prevented the much-anticipated Finals showdown between Kobe and LeBron. Howard scored 40 points in Orlando’s conference finals clincher, and during that postseason, he averaged 20 points, 15 rebounds and 2.6 blocks.
The players who averaged at least 20 points and 15 rebounds while making the Finals in a the same postseason is a who’s who of the best centers in NBA history: Bob Pettit (four times), Chamberlain (three), Shaq (two), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (two), Bill Russell (two), Howard, Duncan, Moses Malone, Dave Cowens, Elgin Baylor and Mikan.
Howard also earns intangible points because he was the starting center on the 2008 gold medal-winning Redeem Team, and he (along with Nate Robinson) helped rejuvenate the All-Star Weekend dunk contest after a down period for the event.
Unfortunately, Howard’s intangibles were not always so positive. And his career tumbled after 2012, when Howard requested out of Orlando. He was traded to the Lakers, sparking the memorable “Now this is going to be fun” Sports Illustrated cover, and, perhaps most important from a long-term perspective, had back surgery.
In retrospect, Howard’s most representative team wasn’t the Magic or the Lakers, but rather the Houston Rockets, with whom he played for three years after his first unsatisfying Lakers stint. Howard fulfilled the life cycle of an actual rocket: He burned bright and hot and reached incredible heights before ultimately falling to Earth.
