At one point, Dwight Howard was one of the biggest stars in the NBA. An eight-time All-Star and All-NBA selection, Howard made five All-Defensive teams and took home Defensive Player of the Year honors three times. After playing with LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers during the 2021-22 campaign, Howard wasn’t signed last season, so he packed up and took his talents to Taiwan.
The former slam-dunk contest champion has taken shots at the association and its stars since heading to Asia, but still desires to be among them. In one of his latest posts, Howard threatens to drop 85 points on Team USA for Taiwan if he isn’t added to his country’s squad. This came on the heels of Team USA’s FIBA failure and James’ announcement that he’ll commit to playing in the 2024 Olympics. Now Howard wants a piece of the action.
It’s apparent from Howard’s passive-aggressive swipes at the NBA over the past year that he’s still harboring feelings about not being picked up in 2022. You can’t really blame him for that when other players close to his 37 years of age are still getting contracts in The Association despite being far less effective. However, hurling insults disguised as jokes might not be the best route.
Howard is finding out the hard way that there comes a time when these professional leagues are just done with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re ready to be done; they’ll decide for you. Undoubtedly, he could play 15 minutes per night on an NBA roster at almost 38 years old, but it seems they’ve moved on Howard collectively. Superman led this league in rebounds five times in his career. Plenty of NBA teams could bring Howard off the bench to grab six to eight rebounds a game and block a couple of shots.
Where this dream of playing on Team USA is concerned, that’s probably not going to happen either. And that “threat” of scoring 85 points against his countrymen is also a pipe dream, as Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) did not qualify for the Paris games next summer. There is a chance he could end up back in the NBA, but trolling isn’t the way to make that dream come true.
