Back in 2004, Dwight Howard made a gutsy decision—he skipped college and walked straight into NBA stardom as the No. 1 overall pick. From the jump, the league felt his presence. As a center, he dominated the paint with brute force and bounce, putting up 15.7 points and 11.8 rebounds per game across a hefty 1,242 appearances. Not to mention, he snatched up three Defensive Player of the Year awards like it was routine. And now, two decades later, he’s finally set to be enshrined in the Naismith Hall of Fame.

Dwyane Wade summed up Howard’s role perfectly. “He’s not the guy who had the ball; he’s a guy that had to go get the ball,” he said: “What Dwight did was he went out and got it with blocks, he went and got it with rebounds, and they had to give him in the post. For a guy to have a career that he had and became one of the best ever to play this game, he should be in the top 75. He most definitely should be.” Ironically, though, the very job Wade just praised wasn’t even the one Dwight was chasing.

That truth came out loud and clear on Podcast P. Former Magic vet Cuttino Mobley, who played with Dwight during his rookie season, pulled back the curtain: “He wanted to be a guard.” Mobley continued, “We had four shooters. Now, Dwight wanted to, like, step out the paint and do the crossovers, and he was really good at it. But, you know, Paul, come on… It looked good in drills.” That version of Dwight never made it to prime-time NBA action, but he sure tried.

Even more surprising? Dwight actually owned it. He jumped into the comments after the podcast clip dropped, saying: “You heard @cuttinoslife I was good at it, it just wasn’t my role 🤷🏾‍♂.”

Yet despite the mismatch between dream and duty, Dwight mastered the job handed to him. He anchored the paint like a fortress and became a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Between 2007 and 2014, he led the league in rebounds six times and blocks twice. During that dominant run, his teams won 62 percent of their games. But here’s the kicker—he might’ve had a legit shot at a title in just his debut season.

Magic ownership broke Dwight Howard’s squad

Back in the 2000s, the NBA was basically a game of ping-pong between the Lakers and Spurs when it came to championships. The Lakers bagged five titles, the Spurs got three, but lost in all that glitz were the what-could-have-beens. One of them? The 2004-05 Orlando Magic.

According to Cuttino Mobley, that squad never got a fair shot. He believed the ownership gave up before the team could fully grow together. “That was actually the best team I was on of all the teams,” he told Basketball Network. And he wasn’t just hyping it up. “You had Steve (Francis) at the one, me at the two, Grant Hill at the three, Dwight Howard at the four, and Kelvin Cato at the five. Then off the bench, you had Jameer Nelson, DeShawn Stevenson, Keith Bogans, Hedo Turkoglu, and Tony Battie.”

That lineup had everything—youth, experience, shooting, and athleticism. As Mobley put it, “Everybody complemented Dwight. We ran the floor, we were all athletic, we could shoot the ball, and we can all pass.”

And he wasn’t wrong about their potential. The Magic held the number one seed in the East briefly. By December 11, 2004, they were 13-6. Even by year-end, they sat third in the standings. But then came the crash—they missed the playoffs by April 2005.

Eventually, frustration bubbled up. “It was just a situation where the coach at the time thought he knew more than what he knew. I had to get out of there,” Mobley recalled. He was traded to Sacramento in January 2005 for Doug Christie, and just like that, the Magic’s most well-rounded roster vanished, along with the chance to win their first-ever championship.