Former Rockets center Dwight Howard, who played with the team from 2013-’16 after signing as a free agent, has said that he nearly retired after his time with Houston because, “the joy was sucked out of it.”
In an interview with Sports Illustrated, the eight-time NBA All-Star said his time in the Lone Star state wore him out.
SI's Lee Jenkins wrote:
Howard does not have many friends in the league—"I'm kind of the loner"—and he became a convenient target. In one game, [Kobe] Bryant called his former [Lakers] teammate "soft as a mother f-----," and in another, Kevin Durant called him worse. It wasn't just fans and media who made him out to be a diva and a slacker, as if a slacker gets those mountainous shoulders. "Some players will tell you they don't care what other people think," Howard says. "They're lying. We all care."
At a low point with the Rockets, after the 2014–15 season, he considered retiring. The jolly giant who supposedly had too much fun on the floor was miserable. “The joy,” Howard says, “was sucked out of it.”
Howard was traded to the Atlanta Hawks before the 2016-’17 season and has since been traded to Charlotte. He’s looking beyond his days on the court as an aspiring farmer:
This summer Howard bought a 700-acre farm in north Georgia where he relaxes with the cows, hogs, turkeys and deer. He is particularly fond of the donkeys, which keep the coyotes away. To prepare for retirement, Howard has written what he calls his "99-year plan," in which he hopes to become Farmer Dwight.
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