While chatting with the media Monday morning, Dwight Howard’s famous sweet tooth had him thinking.
“I have to go to Junior’s and get some cheesecake,” Howard said with a smile. “I think I need to go ahead and get some Junior’s.”
There once was a time — not too long ago — when it seemed as if Howard would be able to have as much Brooklyn cheesecake as he wanted. The Nets wanted Dwight Howard, and Dwight Howard wanted the Nets.
But, like so many things in the star-crossed history of this franchise, what once seemed like a marriage destined to happen instead turned into a series of what-ifs for both sides.
“It’s something that, at the time, would have been the best move,” Howard said Monday morning before his Rockets play the Nets at Barclays Center.
“But everything happens for a reason. I was looking forward to one day being in Brooklyn at the time, but I found a great home in Houston, our team is playing exceptionally well, and we have a great opportunity to do something special.”
Though this is the third season the Nets have been in Brooklyn, this is the first time Howard will play here after being injured when the Lakers came two years ago and when the Rockets came last April.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I was thinking about that when I actually got onto the floor. I was like, ‘Man. This is my first time tonight I’ll be actually playing. It felt good, to be in this arena and playing.’
“Just being in the city, it’s a fun place to be: Brooklyn. I know a lot of people from Brooklyn, so it’s always fun to come back here and see a lot of people that I know.”
From the moment the lockout ended in November 2011 through the following August — when Howard was finally dealt to the Lakers — Nets general manager Billy King had countless conversations with his counterparts in Orlando, trying to find a way to make Howard the centerpiece of the franchise’s move across the Hudson and into Brooklyn.
Howard would have been the perfect pick-and-roll partner for Deron Williams, whom King had already acquired, and instantly would have made the Nets annual contenders to emerge from the Eastern Conference. Only a couple years earlier, Howard had carried a Magic team without another true star to the Finals, and he would be coming to a Nets team with another one on the roster and with owner Mikhail Prokhorov willing to spend whatever it took to build a championship team.
And, right up until the final days before the March 15 trade deadline during the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season, it looked as if Howard would end up a Net one way or another. In addition to the constant trade dialogue between King and then-Magic general manager Otis Smith, Howard openly and repeatedly said he was going to test free agency that summer. It was widely assumed if he reached the open market, he would sign with the Nets.
Instead, on a flight home from San Antonio the night before the trade deadline, he decided to sign a waiver stating he wouldn’t opt out of his contract — a decision he would soon come to regret — suddenly removing any incentive for Orlando to trade him and any chance of the Nets signing him as a free agent that summer.
“I think when I opted in, it kind of changed everything,” he said. “But like I said, Houston is a great place. I love where I’m at. I found a great organization here. Even though I won’t be playing here in Brooklyn, I have a lot of family and friends here, so it’s a lot of fun to visit with those people.”
In summer of 2012, the Nets again tried to acquire him from Orlando, but were rebuffed. That led to the Nets re-signing Brook Lopez — then a restricted free agent — to a four-year, $61 million deal in early July, and Howard was traded to the Lakers a month later.
Howard went through a turbulent year in Los Angeles, feuding with Kobe Bryant and then-coach Mike D’Antoni as the Lakers — whom many imagined as a title contender after adding Steve Nash and Howard to their core of Bryant and Pau Gasol — limped into the playoffs as the eighth seed and were easily swept out of the postseason by the Spurs.
Howard chose to go to Houston as a free agent in the summer of 2013 to play for Hall of Fame big man Kevin McHale and play alongside star James Harden. Meanwhile, the Nets — who were far over the salary cap — never had a chance to make the pitch in free agency for Howard’s services. And there went the transformational star who could have lifted the franchise to heights it hasn’t seen since early in Jason Kidd’s playing days in East Rutherford.
While Howard is experiencing plenty of success with the 26-11 Rockets, the Nets are limping along at 16-21, riding a five-game losing streak with a roster riddled with question marks. The Nets don’t have control of their own first-round pick until 2019 because of a series of moves made in the wake of Howard’s decision to waive his opt-out to try to lift the Nets to the place that one move — bringing Howard to Brooklyn — would have instantly done.
That alternate universe is something Howard still thinks about.
“Yeah, you always have those regrets or whatever,” Howard admitted. “But one thing I try to do is live without regrets. Like I said, everything happens for a reason.
“There was a point in time where I thought this was the best place for me to play basketball, and I guess things didn’t happen the way I wanted them to happen.”
It didn’t work out the way either Howard or the Nets wanted it to. And while Howard has found peace and moved on, the Nets can’t help but think about what could have been, and what’s happened instead.