Dwight Howard reveals someone lied to him about Lakers contract offer after 2020 title season

Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

Former Los Angeles Lakers big man Dwight Howard alleged that his former agent — Calvin Darden Jr. — lied to him and said that the Lakers retracted an offer for him to return to the team in the 2020 offseason.

After winning a title with Los Angeles earlier that year, Howard ended up signing a one-year deal with the Philadelphia 76ers worth the veteran’s minimum.

“I was sad,” Howard said to Jeanie Buss about the fact that he didn’t re-sign with the Lakers. “I wanted to come back. And I don’t know what had happened. No, see we were — I think that we were just told so many different things. And I think now lookin’ back on it with the situation that I had with my agent and him actually gettin’ convicted and bein’ a part of the whole crime — he was a part of it, yeah, the same agent. So, I don’t even know what the truth was because what I was told was that you guys didn’t have a offer for me. I never even knew that — he told me, well actually he said that you guys had an offer, and then he said you guys took the offer back and said, ‘No.'”

Darden allegedly defrauded Howard as well as another former NBA player in Chandler Parsons out of a combined $8 million earlier in the decade. He has been found guilty of fraud, money laundering, bank fraud and a pair of conspiracy counts.

If it weren’t for Howard’s contributions as a rebounder, defender and interior scorer, perhaps Los Angeles wouldn’t have 17 titles as a franchise right now. To be clear, Howard was far removed from his prime — when he was arguably the NBA’s best player — by the time he started his second stint with the Lakers, but he was still such an impactful reserve big man.

He played in all but two of Los Angeles’ 71 games in the truncated 2019-20 regular season and 7.5 points on 72.9 percent shooting from the floor coupled with 7.3 rebounds and 1.1 blocks per contest. Howard ended up finishing in the top 10 in the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award voting that season for his consistent productivity on both sides of the ball.

Howard proved to be an important rotation piece for the Lakers in the 2020 NBA Playoffs as well, as he suited up in 18 games and logged seven starts during the team’s title run.

While Howard signed elsewhere in the 2020 offseason, the 2019-20 season didn’t mark his last as a Laker. He rejoined the squad ahead of the 2021-22 campaign and appeared in 60 regular-season games. Howard averaged 6.2 points and 5.9 rebounds per contest during that season.

The Lakers won just 33 games in the 2021-22 campaign and failed to qualify for the 2022 NBA Playoffs, so Howard never got a real chance to win another ring in Los Angeles.