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NBA Draft: 30 greatest No. 1 overall picks in league history

By Josh Cornelissen

25 Jun 1997: Center Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs speaks with a reporter during the NBA Draft at the Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mandatory Credit: Craig Jones /Allsport
25 Jun 1997: Center Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs speaks with a reporter during the NBA Draft at the Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mandatory Credit: Craig Jones /Allsport /
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Dwight Howard
Dwight Howard. Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images /

NBA Draft: 30 greatest No. 1 overall picks in league history: 13. Dwight Howard

In the 1990s, the Houston Rockets won back-to-back championships by surrounding center Hakeem Olajuwon with shooters at all four positions. That’s an oversimplification of all that those teams had to offer, but that basic structure is what Orlando Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy copied in constructing a team around Dwight Howard.

Howard was never as good as Olajuwon at his peak; that’s part of why Olajuwon is ranked much higher on this list. But he was for multiple years the best defensive player on the planet, twice leading the league in blocks per game and five times in rebounding. While Howard’s lack of offensive creation ability held the team to a lower ceiling than Olajuwon’s Rockets, the Magic did get as far as the NBA Finals with that blueprint.

Howard eventually won his title as a rotation center on the 2019-20 Los Angeles Lakers featuring two other players on this list. That small redemption came after years bouncing around the league as something of a pariah, an enigmatic character never fully devoted to his craft of improving at basketball. That stigma was not entirely wrong.

That mid-career wandering also does a disservice to Howard’s truly impressive prime when he made eight straight All-NBA teams. Howard won Defensive Player of the Year three times, made five All-Defensive teams, and finished in the top-5 in MVP voting four different times. He has played in 113 career postseason games, including making the Conference Finals four different times with three different teams.

Dwight Howard is no Hakeem Olajuwon, but he is a future Hall of Famer who leveraged incredible natural athleticism to completely rule the rim in every game he played in for years. Could he have hit even higher heights if he had a better work ethic and a willingness to do whatever his teams needed to win? Probably so. Yet what he did accomplish was impressive all on its own.