Dwight Howard was confused.
In a team led by LeBron James and Anthony Davis, Howard was regarded as a key role player during the The Lakers’ 2020 NBA championship season But he was not brought back the following season.
“I was so sad. I wanted to come back,” Howard said on this week’s episode of his “Over the Edge with DH12” podcast. “And I don’t know what happened.”
His guest, Laker controlling owner Jeanie Busswas also confused – by Howard’s comment.
“You accepted an offer from the Philadelphia 76ers,” Buss told him.
During a conversation that seemed genuinely warm and caring, Howard and Buss cleared the air about the end of the second – and most successful – of Howard’s three second stints with the Lakers. The eight-time All-Star indicated that he was led to believe by his agent at the time that the team had no interest in re-signing him as a free agent.
“So, like, I don’t even know what the truth is, because I was told you didn’t have an offer for me,” Howard said.
Buss replied, “Oh, no, that’s not true. We made an offer. We did.”
Howard replied: “I never even knew that. He told me – well, actually, he said you have an offerand then he said you took the offer back and said, ‘No.'”
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Later in the conversation, Howard double checked.
“So you all had a proposition for me?” he asked.
“Yes!” Buss replied.
She explained that with the NBA’s salary cap, sometimes it can be difficult to adjust the time to make contract offers to build a roster.
“I think for a player, if a team says, like, we have a contract, but you have to wait to sign it or we have to sign other players first, it would just seem like you’re not a priority,” Howard. said
Buss replied: “I can see why you would feel that way and [that’s] probably what another team trying to sign you would tell you to take us down. But that’s not who we are. And you know that.”
Both Howard and Buss agreed that the Lakers could have won more championships had they the 2020 team stayed together Instead, several players, incl Rajon Rondoleft as free agents, while the team traded away players like Danny Green and JaVale McGee.
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“Do you feel that if we had kept the team together we would have won some championships?” Howard asked Buss.
Buss replied: “I think so. I feel like when you win a championship, then you give the guys a chance to defend their title. … But at one point there were, like, three or four guys not coming back, then it wasn’t the same anyway.”
Howard ended up signing a one-year deal with the 76ers but returned to the Lakers for 2021-22, the last of his 18 seasons in the NBA.
“It’s so good to have the conversation because now it leaves no room for miscommunication. We have an understanding,” Howard said. “Because for years I was so hurt by it. … It just seemed like we had something, but it’s just like we didn’t handle it like we should have on both ends.”
Buss added later: “We would have been better off staying together. But it was, like, a misdirection or a misunderstanding.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
