Dwight Howard talks Kobe union, NBA 75 on "Club Shay Shay"
Superman is in the building!
Well, not Clark Kent himself, but when it comes to the NBA, the long-renowned nickname is synonymous with one man: Dwight Howard.
Howard first claimed the moniker after a memorable emergence in the 2008 Dunk Contest, and while that high-flying spectacle is a highlight of his career, his résumé is chock-full of impressive achievements.
Those include three straight Defensive Player of the Year awards (2009-11), eight straight All-Star appearances (2007-14), five first-team All-NBA selections, and four first-team All-Defensive nods. It's a career that's undoubtedly Hall of Fame worthy, but for Howard, it's missing one notable honor: a spot on the NBA's Top 75 list.
"I'm very surprised that I wasn't put on the list," Howard told Shannon Sharpe on the latest episode of "Club Shay Shay." "When I saw that I wasn't on the list, I was really upset, and I really wanted to say, ‘I don’t even want to play basketball no more.' I did all this stuff, I've accomplished all of these things, I feel like I've been a great ambassador for the NBA and the game globally, and I feel like that was just total disrespect.
"Even with people saying I didn't take the game serious … three-time Defensive Player of the Year, I had to take defense serious enough to want to win it three times in a row, and I actually should've won it four times in a row. The last year I didn't win it was because I asked for a trade, and the media went on the whirlwind about me wanting to leave Orlando, and the person who won was third-team All-Defense that year. I was first-team. … I've been playing 18 years. I had to take something serious in order to play that long."
Howard has shown a high level of commitment in various points of his career. His paint protection and rebounding was critical in the Lakers' bubble championship run during 2020, and though a number of critics had written him off after he'd bounced around between several teams, his new-look physique and improved diet produced incredible results on the court.
The impressive showing bought the then 34-year-old a one-year deal with the Sixers after winning his first title, and he landed back with Los Angeles for the ‘21 season. But though Howard's career is riddled with highs, its biggest low came during his first stint with L.A. beginning in 2012, where he was expected to star alongside Kobe Bryant.
It didn't take long for basketball watchers to see that the fit wasn't ideal, and Bryant became brazenly critical of Howard shortly after they joined forces.
"There's no way he could say he didn't like my work ethic," Howard said in response to Sharpe's questions regarding Bryant's apparent issues with Howard's discipline. "There's nobody in the NBA who can complain or say something about Dwight Howard's work ethic. My body is better now than it was when I came into the league. Who can say anything about my work ethic? Who can outwork Dwight Howard? People say stuff and not paying attention to what they're talking about. If Kobe [questioned my work ethic] it must be talking about another context."
So why didn't the two-headed monster work well with one another?
"It didn't work out because we were in two different points in our career," Howard said. "I led the league in rebounds, I was second or third in blocks, and everybody was saying I didn't have a good season. It was me Kobe, Pau [Gasol] and Steve Nash. Half these guys didn't even play. Steve Nash was hurt, Kobe ended up getting hurt, so he didn't even play. Pau had migraines, all types of stuff. We just had a team with a whole bunch of guys that were hurt. … We really tried, but when we got on the court, it just wasn't there."
Howard's message for the media is simple: stop misjudging him.
"The media gets who I am in general wrong," he told Sharpe. "Over a period of time, it's been so many things that have been said about my character, how I am with teams, teammates. All of these things have been crazy to me that people would even think that I'm a bad teammate, that I'm a cancer in the locker room, that I'm a bad guy, a diva. All of these things that your partner [Skip Bayless] on one of your other shows says about me."
Check out the full "Club Shay Shay" episode with Dwight Howard below!
