longtime NBA insider Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson<\/a>\u00a0on Robinson’s new show “Scoop B Selects,” 18-year NBA center Dwight Howard explained reflected on his fraught free agency following his the only title of his career, achieved as a reserve on the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020.<\/p>\nPer Howard, he had initially been promised that the Lakers would re-sign him, but eventually his offer was pulled. After that, he signed a minimum deal with Philadelphia to back up All-NBA center Joel Embiid for the 2020-21 season.<\/p>\n
“I was told that there was a contract and then I was so happy that I heard I was coming back, I tweeted about it and my agent called me back and said, \u201cHey. The Lakers took the contract off the table. You gotta take that tweet down.\u201d \u00a0I was like, \u2018Damn! Why would they do that?\u2019 and it really kind of messed with me because I\u2019m like, I came in with the right attitude towards winning, not worried about points, rebounds\u2026 just worried about us winning another championship\u2026 \u00a0and so many people made a big emphasis on me worrying about points and all that stuff which I think all players want to get out in the game and score and be effective,” Howard said.<\/p>\n
Without Howard or JaVale McGee, the Lakers brought in former All-Star centers Andre Drummond and Marc Gasol. T<\/p>\n
he club was felled by injury issues and ultimately got booted out of the first round of the 2021 playoffs. With its 2020 championship-era core of Hall of Famers LeBron James and Anthony Davis, Los Angeles only got as far as the 2023 Western Conference Finals. Davis was traded away midseason last year.<\/p>\n
“So, but I was highly upset that I didn\u2019t get a chance to compete for a title defense because I believed that we had a special team and we had a window where we could\u2019ve won and been to the NBA Finals multiple years,” Howard added.<\/p>\n
A three-time Defensive Player of the Year, Howard was a double-double machine during his peak seasons with the Orlando Magic, Lakers (in his first go-around with the club, 2012-13), and Houston Rockets.\u00a0All told, the eight-time All-NBA honoree boasts career averages of 15.7 points, 11.8 rebounds, 1.8 blocks, 1.3 assists and 0.9 steals in 1,242 healthy regular season bouts (1,078 starts).<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m just thankful that I\u2019ve put myself in a position to be a Hall of Famer, you know?” Howard told Robinson. “My work ethic, my discipline, my sacrifice, consistency and my faith has got me to the Hall of Fame and it\u2019s an amazing honor to hear everywhere I go that people call me a Hall of Famer. “<\/p>\n
MORE NEWS:\u00a0Sixers pressured to pull off blockbuster trade for Western Conference wing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Hall of Fame former NBA superstar recently revealed why he was disappointed he once had to join…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-119011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}