In his first year of eligibility, Dwight Howard has been elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. Howard joins fellow first-balloter Carmelo Anthony in the class of 2025, which will be announced in its entirety during a ceremony at the NCAA Final Four on April 5.
Over 18 season with seven teams, Howard, who won his lone NBA championship with the 2020 Los Angeles Lakers, was an eight-time All-Star. He also made eight All-NBA teams, won Defensive Player of the Year three times and helped the 2008 Olympic “Redeem Team” to its first of five consecutive gold medals after the 2004 team lost three games while settling for the bronze.
For his career, Howard averaged 15.7 points and 11.8 rebounds, but he was much more dominant than those numbers would indicate during his prime years in Orlando, where he guided the Magic to the 2009 Finals against Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.
Howard was a beast in Orlando, where Stan Van Gundy designed a system that at the time was unconventional with four shooters around his center, who wasn’t a traditional post scorer but was so dominant physically that he basically demanded double teams. That is the team that many people point back to as first unlocking the power of the 3-pointer — even if the volume looks laughably low in comparison to today’s league — and it was built entirely around Howard, who also wrecked opponents on the glass and as an athletic-freak shot blocker.
In the summer of 2012, Howard left Orlando for the Lakers, who tried to put together a superteam with him and Steve Nash alongside Bryant and Pau Gasol. It didn’t work. Nash’s body was broken by that point, and the Lakers limped into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed and were promptly swept by the Spurs.
Howard never fit with Bryant, neither from a basketball nor personality standpoint, and after one year of playing together Howard left an extra $30 million on the table to sign with Houston, where he spent his next three seasons, earning the last of his All-Star selections in 2014.
From there Howard never again played for the same team for two consecutive seasons, with stops in Atlanta, Charlotte and Washington before going back to the Lakers in 2019-20, when he was a serious contributor to the aforementioned championship that the Lakers won on the strength of size and defense. He was huge on the offensive glass for that team, and he gave the Lakers a second seven-foot defender alongside Anthony Davis. That Lakers team bullied its way to a title, and Howard a big part of it.
After a season with Philadelphia, Howard came back to the Lakers for a third time for the final season of what is now, officially, a Hall of Fame career.
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