Charlotte Hornets: 2017-18 player grades for Dwight Howard

Highlights

While he had plenty of solid games, Howard occasionally flashed some of what once made him the most dominant two-way center in the league. Let’s start with his most memorable game of the season: a late March clash with the Brooklyn Nets.

The man known as “The Daily Double” more than lived up to that moniker at the Barclays Center, finishing with 32 points and 30 rebounds on 10-for-17 “shooting.” I put shooting in quotation marks because most of Howard’s attempts were off of put-backs and the occasional lob.

If you go by game score, that wasn’t even Howard’s best game of the season. That came against his former team, the Hawks, on March 15 (so it wasn’t the “revenge” game where he tallied seven blocks).

While Howard didn’t have another one-man block party, he still dominated his former team. He dropped 30 points and 12 boards with a couple of swats against a Hawks team that pretty much packed it in for the season by this point.

Howard’s most surprising performance, however, came towards the end of 2017. Most of his numbers against the Golden State Warriors were about what you would expect: 29 points and 13 boards. Most fans did not expect him to dish out seven assists though.

These weren’t some cheap assists where the player gets the pass and makes a dribble move. Howard made some really good passes out of double-teams, making the Dubs pay for sending extra defenders.