Dwight Howard says he wants to play into his 40s
If Rockets center Dwight Howard gets his way, we may still be seeing him in the National Basketball Association when the 2024 presidential election rolls around.
Ahead of Wednesday’s homecoming of sorts to Orlando for a game against the Magic, the team that drafted him as an 18-year-old in 2004, Howard opened up about his desire to still be in the league at age-40 and beyond.
“That’d be fun if I was to play this game (that long,)” Howard, now 30, said to Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. “That was always my goal, to play 20 years, 20-something years in this league. I’m extremely happy and blessed to have been able to play this game for as long as I have been so far.”
“I have played a lot of minutes,” continued the eight-time All-Star. “I’ve been doing a lot since I came into the league. I’m thankful. I’m not going to complain about it. I’m happy that I’ve been able to play 12 years so far. A lot of NBA players never played this long so I am very happy and blessed that I’ve been able to play 12 years in the NBA. Hopefully, I can play another 10, but the time I’ve played, I’ve enjoyed it.”
Needless to say, that might be a bit of wishful thinking on Howard’s part. Only five players in NBA history have played in 20 seasons or more (Robert Parish, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Willis, and the currently active Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant). Furthermore, Howard has dealt with chronic knee pain and other ailments (including some fairly serious ones he recently played through) over the course of his time in Houston, missing a total of 58 games since signing there in the summer of 2013. That’s not even to mention the over 32,000 career minutes he already has logged on his tires.
The former Defensive Player of the Year still has another eight to ten years to go before reaching his lofty goal, and already he is beginning to show the early signs of a complete physical breakdown. And with all of these reports about his supposed discontent that never seem to end, neither the Rockets nor any other NBA team may want to continue putting up with his drama for anywhere close to that long.
Perhaps Howard will eventually have to take the advice of the aforementioned Bryant, his former Laker teammate, who explained his own decision to retire by saying, “My heart can take the pounding. My mind can handle the grind. But my body knows it’s time to say goodbye.” But then again, Dwight never listened to anything Kobe said anyway, so maybe we should just brace ourselves for the possibility of innumerably more missed free throws and the ongoing carousel of “Dwight Howard is unhappy” reports for the better part of the next decade. (*Shudders*)
H/T Rotoworld
