D12 Wanted To Play Point Guard Like Magic With The Magic
Could you imagine Dwight Howard as a PG?
Dwight Howard was a beast of a big man during his prime.
He was fast, explosive and strong, and played with a lot of power in the post (on both ends of the floor).
Not many players were able to stop him when he got into the paint and not many players were able to finish on him near the rim. He was constantly posterizing defenders and denying anybody who shot near the rim.
Howard was truly one of the greatest centers to play the game and his accolades prove it.
He was a defensive titan who won the Defensive Player of the Year Award 3 years in a row, was an All-Defensive player 5 years in a row, was the rebounding leader 5 times and was the blocks leader 2 times.
But Howard didn’t just do his work on the defensive end. He also did work on the offensive end, where he averaged 16 points on 59 percent shooting in his career. He was also an 8-time NBA All-Star and 8-time All-NBA
He was the perfect center during the latter stage of the age of traditional bigs (2000s and mid-2010s).
But did you know Howard started his basketball journey off as a point guard and only started playing power forward/center when he got into the NBA?
On an episode of Above the Rim with DH 12, he told guest Jeanie Buss that he aspired to be like Magic Johnson. He wanted to become a big point guard like his idol but was forced to play center by presumably his team, the Orlando Magic.
“When I had this VHS tape, I would just watch [Magic Johnson] show me drills and then I would go outside and work on the drills and I was like, ‘Man, I want to be a 6-9 point guard like Magic Johnson.’ He was like my model for like, ‘I got to learn how to handle the basketball.’ So, that’s all I did. I wanted to play point guard and I actually played point guard up until I got to the NBA… They wanted me to be a center.”
In Howard’s 18 years in the NBA, he averaged 1.3 assists.
This isn’t terrible considering he was a traditional center. But if Orlando had nurtured his point guard-ism and didn’t force him to play big, he could’ve been Nikola Jokic or DeMarcus Cousins before Nikola Jokic and DeMarcus Cousins.
And could you imagine that?
Howard could have been an explosive playmaking center or a big, athletic point guard… he could’ve been another LeBron James!
What would the league have looked like had that happened?
Damnit! Now I’m curious.
Maybe I’ll create this scenario in 2k.
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