Dwight Howard wants to play for the Los Angeles Lakers again, according to NBA insider Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson of Bally Sports.
Howard didn’t play in the NBA last season. He was playing professional basketball in Taiwan.
Howard has career averages of 15.7 points, 11.8 rebounds and 1.8 blocks with the Orlando Magic, Lakers, Houston Rockets, Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Hornets, Washington Wizards and Philadelphia 76ers. He is 37 years old and still in great shape.
Howard last played for the Lakers in 2021-22. He averaged 6.2 points and 5.9 rebounds while shooting 61.2% from the field. No team offered Howard an NBA contract for the 2022-23 season, so he took his talents to Taiwan. The future Hall of Famer told Zion Olojede of Complex that he can “provide a team with 25 minutes of dominant basketball.”
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“I know I can provide a team with 25 minutes of dominant basketball,” Howard said. “And that’s not even scoring, that’s just playing defense, locking people up, protecting the paint, rebounding, and finishing around the basket. I’ve had my fun in the game. I just want to go out like a champ like I’m supposed to.”
It will be fascinating to see if Howard is back in the NBA next season. The Atlanta native is seriously open to going back to the Lakers, who lost to the Denver Nuggets in the 2023 Western Conference Finals in four games.
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“It’s been crazy,” Howard said. “It’s been crazy, but it’s just for some reason we just clicked. I don’t know, you could have a little girlfriend or whatever and it’s just, y’all done been together, y’all done broke up. You done tried other girlfriends but it’s just some type of connection y’all got.
“That’s how we feel about the Lakers. Man, it’s just something that we got this connection. I don’t know. It got to work. It got to work. But I do love the Lakers, man. We had the championship run there and I wish we would’ve had a chance to keep going because that was the squad right there. We had everything. We had everything.”
In 205 games with the Lakers, Howard averaged 10.7 points and 8.8 rebounds in three different stints.
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