Dwight Howard gave fans a blast from the past on his X profile. The three-time Defensive Player of the Year uploaded a video of his highlights from the 2007 FIBA Americas Championship. Flexing the peak of his athleticism at 22, Howard poked fun at Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James.
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The video accentuates Howard’s unreal strength and skillset on an international stage. The former NBA star captioned the video,
“I dunked on melo and stole an oop from bron.”
I dunked on melo and stole an oop from bron pic.twitter.com/QQBAfgzMWh
— Dwight Howard (@DwightHoward) September 5, 2024
The highlight reel has the center leaping to block shots, grab rebounds, and posterize multiple opponents. As for his caption, technically Howard did do the things he claimed.
Around the 20-second mark, Howard slams down a putback dunk with Anthony right under the basket, who had positioned himself to grab an offensive rebound. Hence, he technically did dunk on the forward.
Right after that highlight is a clip of the center supposedly stealing an alley-oop from James, where the two are running down the floor on a fastbreak.
Apart from these two specific moments, the video perfectly describes what a prime Howard looked like. At just 22 years of age, he was putting on an absolute show in front of the world.
The USA beat Argentina 118-81 in the Final to win the tournament, with Howard being quite the force down low to help out his team. His stellar performance in 2007 was a deciding factor in bringing him back to the national team for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Not many recall that Howard was the youngest player on the Redeem Team led by Kobe Bryant. The roster unsurprisingly won the tournament and kickstarted a run that has yielded five straight Olympic gold medals.
The 2024 roster was inarguably the strongest team Team USA had sent to the Olympics since the Redeem Team. Howard spoke on the disparity between the two squads during an appearance on the Gil’s Arena podcast. He boldly predicted that the 2008 roster would beat the 2024 team in a seven-game series, saying,
“I’m going with our team. Well, we got a prime Kobe, we got young Bron, we got the bald-headed D-Wade. I’d go 08. We was young. We talking about Bron at 23, I’m 22, Melo at 24, Chris Bosh, at 24. Oh my god. It’s prime, this is their years. Wade at 26, bald-headed Wade, and Boozer was going crazy.”
While it’s unclear who would’ve come out on top. However, dealing with a 22-year-old Howard would certainly have been an arduous chore for Joel Embiid, Anthony Davis, and Bam Adebayo.
