Dwight Howard is a first stage hall of fame, but that’s why it is still underestimated

Look at Dwight Howard while he is to be included in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, Saturday. His shoulders are cut from the stone; The rest of his body follows the example. It looks like a 7 feet Superman, which was why he wore the Man of Steel cloak for a Dunk competition that he won (as a center).

A handful of years in her career, we thought of it for an all-time. The overall choice n. 1 of the NBA in 2004, Howard was, at the age of 23, the defensive player of the League of the year and an MVP candidate for the best five. It seemed invincible and was practically, defeating Prime Lebron James on a course towards the 2009 NBA finals.

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So, we measured it against the untouchable centers of the NBA-Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and Moses Malone-for the rest of his career.

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Howard never got there. He was the great most dominant man in the League for a five -year race in Orlando, where he first earned his reputation of innerous superstar. It has never been so evident that in April 2012, between the drama of the commercial demand for Howard’s realization, when he embraced Stan Van Gundy awkwardly during an interview in which the coach was confirming the relationship that his Star Star wanted to shoot.

That reputation followed him in Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and Washington, where along the way he stopped performing as all-star before his thirtieth birthday. He smiled when the situations asked for a cipiglio and, consequently, collided with teammates, including Kobe Bryant and James Harden, who were not willing to sell offensive control over a co-protagonist whose leadership and ability could not be commanded.

“Dwight’s basketball qi is not updated to be a dominant player,” Abdul-Jabbar once said.

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O’Neal spoke worse than Howard, often, on national television. This is what the criticisms lasted.

Howard’s back has also annoyed him, which seemed impossible in the way he was built, but he made it possible that this is also in consideration. He lost 28 games of the 2011-12 campaign and requested surgery to repair a hernia disc at the end of the season. It has never been the same. Bryant was not willing to give him a clemency.

(The 38.3 minutes of Howard per game since 2011-12 would have guided the League last season. Remember it.)

In the middle of his career, the game was passing Howard. He was a low post player in an era defined by the spacing. After a trip to the finals of the 2015 Western Conference with the second seed of Harden, Howard has played less and less for increasingly disappointing teams in increasingly depressing situations.

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Then a fun thing happened. In deference to James-the prepree-to-pro player who was enrolled n. 1 In 2003 and another reason why we expected so much from Howard-E Anthony Davis, Howard accepted a complementary role on the 2020 Lakers, even obtaining a sixth point of view of the year and won a title together. (He started alongside Nikola Jokić to close Denver’s pepper.)

Despite repeated attempts during his career to rename his image, Howard could never escape that air of immaturity. It is perhaps what led to Howard’s snobbish from NBA 75, even if it is by far the highest player on our Bill Russell scale not to be appointed among the 75 biggest players ever.

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He leads to repeat: at his peak Howard he came second in the MVP votes and beat one of the three greatest players of the game ever in a series of better playoffs. Not many people can affirm it. It is through that goal – and not through our expectations on how a superstar should act – that we should see Howard on the eve of his induction in the Hall of Fame of Basketball, an honor that he certainly deserves to the first vote.

Dwight was not a center of all times on par with Russell, Kareem, Wilt, Shaq, Hakeem or Moses, but belongs to any list of big big ones, in addition to them, between Patrick Ewing, David Robinson and the rest. Which is not a bad place to stay when you think about it. Dwight Howard measure while finding, a Hall of Famer.