Orlando Magic: Would You Take Dwight Howard Back?

With rumors that Dwight Howard is unhappy in Houston, if the opportunity arose would you welcome him back to the Orlando Magic?

For the Orlando Magic, a nice win over the Portland Trail Blazers has them at 15-11 for the season and on a three-game win streak. Not only are they still in the playoff picture, that ties them for the third longest win streak in the NBA right now as well. Clearly then this is a team that appears to have turned a corner after years of piling up losses and young talent through the draft.

If you compare the fortunes of this team to that of former star player Dwight Howard, it’s hard not to break into a smile. Howard of course is still an All-Star level player when on form, and really as breakups go, this team appears to be over their former superstar center.

We’d be lying if we said it didn’t take a while to get to this point though; the hangover from this exit left this team reeling for years.

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In any event right now it looks like Howard is about as close as the Magic are to winning a first NBA championship. Making the finals was the best he could manage in the pinstriped blue, and he’s never been as close to getting over the top again. If anything Howard’s is a cautionary tale of how the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

Forcing his way out of Orlando, and later the Los Angeles Lakers, have done much to sour his reputation around the league. So with rumors circulating that he’s now unhappy in Houston with the Rockets, it’s hard to feel much sympathy for him.

To be fair to the player, where this situation differs is that Howard has come out and said he’s happy where he is, and that there’s no truth to the stories that he wants to leave.

He is also being underused on a Rockets team that looks a shadow of the organization that made the conference finals last year and looked primed for another deep run this season. Now, whether Howard does leave Houston or not, you can be sure he wouldn’t be coming back to Orlando.

The team is not a contender right now, and at this point in his career that’s the only kind of team Howard would be interested in playing for. But hypothetically speaking, if it was possible to bring Dwight Howard back to Orlando to play for the Magic, would you even want him on this team?

Even if we go down this road and disregard the financial implications such a move would have, one thing we can all agree on is that current starting center Nikola Vucevic would have to be moved.

Howard would want to be a starter, while “Vooch” makes too much money and is too good a player to come off the bench on a nightly basis (although, there was a time when a certain Marcin Gortat of the Washington Wizards was backing up Howard).

But is doing something like that even worth it? Both players are double-double machines, although this season Vucevic is averaging 8.7 rebounds a night, the lowest mark since his rookie year. For a bit of context however, he’s playing 29.8 minutes a night, way down from the career-high 34.2 of last season.

Vucevic’s 15.9 points a game are also down from the 19.3 points he averaged last season.

Regardless though Vucevic fits excellently into the system the Magic currently operate.

He’s become an average defensive center, and although he’s as good as he’s ever been on that end (career high defensive plus/minus of plus-2.1) he’s still nowhere near Howard (interestingly though Howard’s defensive plus/minus this season is plus-1.7, although underuse and the general feeling that the Rockets are not playing as a unit on that end play their part here).

He’s five years younger, and although he’s never gotten through an entire season without missing some time through injury, he hasn’t had the kind of serious setbacks Howard has (back problems have been an issue for Howard for years now).

There are obviously reasons to want to take Howard over Vucevic, but the fact is he’s no longer dominant enough to change the fortunes of this team so drastically that it’s worth exploring (we haven’t even looked at what the Magic would have to potentially give up to acquire his services).

Where it gets interesting though, is when you consider Vucevic takes the most field goal attempts (14.2) on his team, while Howard is tied for fourth in the same category with the Rockets (8.3). Now, that’s supposedly one of the main reasons he’s unhappy in his current situation, and if you were to straight swap him with Vucevic, he’d likely be putting up huge numbers.

You can’t expect a big man to lock in defensively and not get the ball in the post on some offensive plays. That’s no fun for the big man and he’ll feel under-appreciated. Again this looks to be the case here.

What’s somewhat ironic about the above observation though, is that Howard used to be in the position Vucevic is in now, albeit with veteran players around him. He got all the touches he wanted and posted monster numbers (20.6 points and 14.5 rebound averages in 2011-12) on a roster that was a contender.

Only he wasn’t happy with that scenario so he moved on to pastures new. Perhaps now he sees that he didn’t have it all bad when he was in Orlando.

As mentioned though if Howard ever were to come back to the Magic, they’d need to give up considerable talent in return to get him. As it is financially it would be beyond difficult anyway. But thinking about it for a second, it’s not even worth it at this point in his career. There were some great times together, a lot of happy memories and winning basketball games.

But both the team and the player have moved on, and you have to feel in the Magic’s case at least, they’ve got a bright future in front of them.

Vucevic was signed to a great long term deal last summer (four years, $53 million) and although he’s putting up numbers not quite to Howard’s standard, he continues to improve and was the best player the Magic got out of the deal that sent Howard to Los Angeles.

As for Howard, well there’s no doubt he’s still a quality player. Even the fans who hated him for his departure will have to admit that. Is there a certain sweetness seeing him struggle to get to the top of the mountain with a different team? Possibly, but really that kind of outlook on basketball and life will leave you a bitter individual anyway.

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It was fun while it lasted, Dwight, and all the best in the future no matter who you play for, but the Orlando Magic don’t need you anymore.