The Case For Dwight Howard

The Orlando Magic may look at bringing Dwight Howard back this summer and it’s a move that could suit both parties.

With the NBA regular season pretty much over, it’s time for the Orlando Magic to face up to the fact that they’ll have some pretty big decisions to make this summer. Bound for the lottery once more, they’ll have to decide what player they should draft with their pick or if they should package it up with a young player or two to bring in more experienced heads.

Even more crucial, this is a big offseason for free agents, especially when you consider essentially every team will have the cap space to go after the big names. The Magic can’t afford to get left behind in this process, as we’ve seen the influx of cash as a result of the new television deal even the playing field in terms of where top players will sign.

One name that has surfaced as a potential target for the Magic is former center Dwight Howard. Although his split from the team was far from clean, there’s no doubt that during his first run with the team (which included a losing appearance in the NBA Finals) he was a massive success.

But could bringing him back for another tour of duty really be the answer for this team? The acquisition that makes them contenders once more? I’ve already looked at why this is a bad idea, and really I can’t stress enough how I am in that camp. In my opinion the Magic need to look elsewhere to become relevant once more.

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But let’s at least consider the positives in potentially resigning Howard this summer.

Let’s begin with the fact he’s still a top-five player at his position in this league, despite recent injury concerns. Also worth noting, and this doesn’t get brought up enough, is the element of bad luck he’s had as a player since leaving the Magic in 2012.

Now, you could say that poor luck was self-inflicted given his manic desire to leave Orlando at the time, and some Magic fans have delighted in the fact he’s yet to win a championship elsewhere. But it’s not entirely his fault that it hasn’t worked out both with the Los Angeles Lakers and now the Houston Rockets.

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When Howard arrived in L.A., he joined Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Steve Nash on what was a team that was supposed to challenge for a championship. Instead, they barely scraped into the playoffs and were bounced in the first round by the San Antonio Spurs.

During that season, Nash’s body broke down, Gasol became the odd man out and Bryant didn’t change the way he played the game so as to include Howard’s talents more. They weren’t as bad as you might think though, but there’s no doubting they were dysfunctional and failed to gel properly.

When Howard moved to Houston, he joined forces with James Harden, a player with some of the same tendencies as Bryant. Harden doesn’t get enough credit for being a willing passer however, although like Bryant with the Lakers there’s no doubting the offense runs through him most of the time.

They made the Western Conference Finals last year, but this season they look like they might miss out on the playoffs. As a unit they’ve peaked and at this point a split between Howard and the Rockets may make the most sense for both parties. Where Howard has again been unlucky is the fact that the game continues to move away from the paint, a place he usually dominates.

It also doesn’t help that he jumped conferences at a time when the Golden State Warriors were rising to dominance. There’s a kind of irony here in that Howard left the Magic because he wanted to win championships, yet since departing he’s only ever moved further away from that goal.

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Would going back to Orlando enable him to possibly win a title? If you add him to the current roster no; if anything all he does is put a cap on the potential of this young team. You’re not winning big with a dominant center surrounded by average shooters like Victor Oladipo, Elfrid Payton and Aaron Gordon.

The Magic tried that tactic before with elite shooters and couldn’t get over the hump.

But a compelling argument could be made for the Magic trying to bring Howard back because if you think about it, are they going to be able to do any better this summer? Kevin Durant isn’t coming to town and we saw last summer with the inability to get Paul Millsap to join the team that it’s still not a destination for even second-tier free agents.

So if the choice was to either bring in no big name this summer or an All-Star caliber player, what would you do? In that instance it’s easy to see why bringing Howard back into the fold would make sense, even if it would be a panic move of sorts. To me that’s the main reason to resign him, because it’s likely he’s as good as it gets in terms of making a splash this summer.

Thinking positively about this possibly happening, it may be that some other big name may fancy coming down to Florida to join forces with Howard to try and win a championship. It’s also frustrating to think what might have been had the Magic held on to Tobias Harris and Channing Frye.

Both are capable shooters (Frye especially) and would have linked up better than any other current Magic player with Howard.

Dwight Howard may become a member of the Orlando Magic again this summer. In doing so, it would prove a couple of things to the rest of the league. Firstly that Howard realized the grass wasn’t greener on the other side, and secondly that the Magic could do no better than bring back a former hero.

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It’s not the most ideal reasoning for a reunion, but that may not matter, as both parties look like they need each other at this time.