CHICAGO - Six years after he left Orlando in search of new horizons, Dwight Howard, who fancies himself as the new Superman, is on the move again.
Unlike prior departures, which were full of drama, this latest landing, his fourth team in four years, was a faint bleep in the news cycle radar.
Oh, how the mighty has fallen.
Howard is going to Brooklyn as a salary dump, saving the Nets nearly $17 million by taking the one year left on his expiring three-year $70.5 contract and shipping the remaining two years of Timofey Mozgov's $64 million deal to Charlotte, Howard's last known address.
According to ESPN's Adrian Wojranowski, the deal, which included two Nets draft picks in 2018 and 2021, won't be completed until July 6 when the moratorium ends.
Previously, Howard was with the Lakers (2012-13), the Rockets (2013-16), the Hawks (2016-17) and the Hornets (2017-18) where according to a tweet from Howard Beck of Bleacher Report: "The locker room did not like Dwight Howard. Guys were sick and tired of his act."
How did a player of Howard's stature - the No.1 overall pick in the 2004 draft, a former league MVP candidate, and a 2009 NBA finalist - wind up in the gutter?
The answer lies in a Meryl Streep movie - It's Complicated.
The Dwightmare began in 2012 when Howard was banished from the franchise which drafted him and took a chance on an 18-year old kid out of high school.
At the outset, the marriage seemed lasting. In his eight seasons in Orlando, Howard became a multiple All-Star, won the Defensive Player of the Year award three times, and established himself as one of the league's premiere bigs.
But he wanted out. He wanted to play with Deron Williams and the Nets, who were about to move to New York, the world's largest media market. Fearing that he would flee as a free agent and get nothing in return, just like what Orlando experienced when Shaq abandoned them in 1996, the Magic reluctantly shipped Howard to the Lakers.
Per The Orlando Sentinel, the Magic tried everything to keep their disgruntled center. They promised him another star in the lineup, told him he would have a voice in hiring a new coach and a GM. WFTV also reported that Howard was offered a five-year contract extension that was $30 million more than what other teams can give, a sweet deal that included a 7.5 percent annual pay raise.
It didn't matter. Howard, who has career averages of 17.4 points, 12.4 rebounds and 2 blocks per, was determined to leave and ignored the sage advice of team owner Rich DeVos, who was 86 at that time.
Devos, a billionaire who was once the 60th wealthiest person in the United States and 205th in the whole world, was right. Howard didn't find what he already had in Orlando.
THE JOY of playing, the camaraderie of being around familiar teammates, the warm embrace of the community were forever lost.
Things began to unravel in L.A. where the spotlight got too big and Howard didn't get along playing alongside the biggest, meanest, most demanding alpha male of them all - Kobe Bryant.
As it turned out, Howard, despite his hulking 6-foot-11 and 265-pound frame, had the low self-esteem of a freckled, unattractive 11-year old girl. He was anxious, calling friends at halftime to assess his performance. And he was insecure, getting upset at Orlando for allowing Tobias Harris to wear his jersey No.12.
After just one turbulent season, Howard drifted to Houston where he didn't exactly go on a great start, comparing James Harden to Courtney Lee. Harden and Howard had a cold war that led to Dwight's departure after three tumultuous seasons.
Atlanta, Howard's hometown, offered him a refuge in July 2016. but the union which was originally inked for three years lasted 13 months as the Hawks traded Howard to Charlotte the following June. Less than a year later Howard is bound for Brooklyn.
Once a potential all-time great, Howard, now 32 and slowing, has been reduced into a gypsy, a robotic player who no longer fits in a modern NBA where speed and spacing and 3-point accuracy are required from a man his size.
In 2008, according to Lee Jenkins of Sports Illustrated, Howard had more endorsement deals than LeBron James. He appeared in seven nationally-televised commercials and got 3.1 million All-Star votes in 2010.
Howard used to be sponsored by Gatorade, Vitamin Water, McDonald's, Adidas, KIA and T-Mobile. They all left, leaving Dwight with just one sponsor - Chinese footwear Peak. The All-Star votes have also dried up and Howard received a mere 151,000 nods in 2017.
"What I've been through I don't want anybody else to go through," Howard told Jenkins in a September 2017 piece on S.I.
Sadly, most of his wounds are self-inflicted.
He is never married but has five kids with five different women. That's not exactly corporate friendly and neither is the lack of stability that is a residue of his now nomadic journey.
"I messed up, I've sinned," adds Howard, who used to sleep with a framed copy of the Ten Commandments and used to pray twice daily, before school and before bedtime.
It's okay. We all make mistakes, we all sin. That's what makes us human.
Sadly, there are consequences to our actions. Life has no instant replay for botched calls. We can't unscramble a scrambled egg, unsink the Titanic.
So far, Howard has made $190.2 million in NBA salaries plus millions more off the court. But the wealth doesn't allow him to fold back the hands of time, doesn't buy him the opportunity to right some wrongs and relove those he had unloved in Orlando.
Money won't buy him peace of mind as he wrestles with the regret of leaving a place where he was the king, where he was adored and revered, where his statue would have been built when he retires his cape.
This is a burden not even Superman can carry.
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