Basketball Hall of Fame: Few centers can match Dwight Howard s peak

Divat Howard will be induced into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend, one of the eight-man basketball hall of fame. Howard is the first member who deserves to be selected - eight All-Stars, eight NBA rosters, three defenses.

While it's hard to say that a member of the first round of Hall of Fame was underrated, this tag applies to Springfield, Massachusetts newest center Howard. As of 2021, Howard is one of the 26 players in NBA history to receive at least five first-team nominations. The other 25 were selected to the league's 75th anniversary team that year. Howard was not selected.

The other players who started three or more first-team performances in the U.S. failed to be selected for the 75th anniversary team, meaning Howard is the only modern player with his level of honor but not receiving this honor.

But Howard's game also has flaws. Like other dominant centers like Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O'Neal, he has a very bad free throw (57% career free throw percentage). He made twice as many turnovers as assists. Although he often asks to get the ball in the inside, he is an inefficient inside scorer. We don't have detailed data from Howard's peak, but according to GeniusIQ, he ranked 62nd in every round of 65 players with at least 1,000 inside attacks since the 2013-14 season.

But Howard's historic underestimation seems to reflect more of his life experience.

Comparing Howard with Robert Parrish, the latter is a model of longevity. The two Hall of Fame centers have similar statistics, and their career win above replacements are similar, according to Basketball-Reference data. But they achieved the final result through different paths: Howard quickly peaked and then fell quickly, while Parrish took a slow and steady approach.

The first 8 seasons

Howard: 78.6 WAR

Parrish: 54.3 WAR

Career

Howard: 27 WAR

Parrish: 55.4 WAR

Due to the peak, Howard was selected for the first team in the United States eight times in his career, while Parrish was selected for only twice (one for the second team and the other for the third team). However, Parish continued to perform well in his 30s and won three rings with the Celtics in the 1980s (and one for the Chicago Bulls in the 1996-97 season as a bench end player), so he was selected for the 75th anniversary team, while Howard failed to make the selection.