Dwight Howard thought James Harden would be a younger Kobe Bryant
The 2012-13 season was a disastrous one for the Los Angeles Lakers. They went into it thinking they had assembled a superteam after trading for Dwight Howard and Steve Nash and adding them to a lineup that already featured Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol.
But instead of winning another NBA championship, the Lakers’ season dissolved before their eyes amidst a gnarly rash of injuries, including the torn Achilles that was the beginning of the end of Bryant’s career.
Howard would leave the following summer as a free agent and join the Houston Rockets. It’s a move that didn’t work out well for him, and while on Matt Hoffa’s Expert Opinion, he seemed to express regret over it.
He said that he went to Houston because he thought James Harden would be a younger version of Bryant.
Via ClutchPoints:
“I felt the best the time was — obviously, I wanted to go to [the Brooklyn Nets] that didn’t happen — I went to the Lakers. And when I saw James Harden, I looked at him as a younger version of Kobe [Bryant]. I don’t know why I was thinking that…
“… The furthest we got was the Western Conference Finals…”
Howard lasted just three years in Houston before he was traded to the Atlanta Hawks. He added that if he could go back in time, he probably would’ve remained with the Lakers.
Of course, he unexpectedly returned to the Purple and Gold for the 2019-20 season, and he played a key role in the team winning it all before also doing a third stint with it in the 2021-22 campaign.
