"It was a Dennis Rodman job" - Dwight Howard on his mindset during the 2020 championship run with the Lakers

The Los Angeles Lakers fully embraced center Dwight Howard when he returned for the 2019-20 NBA season. They brushed off his failed first stint with the franchise a few years earlier.

Howard joined the LeBron James-led squad in a better headspace and with an utter desperation to win his first NBA Championship.

Morphing into The Worm

Howard was aware he was at the tail end of his career then. He was no longer the freakishly athletic center who could bully and outrebound people in the paint. Still, he had one major asset left: his basketball mind.

One way to fully unlock this was to tweak his plastyle accordingly. Rather than try to be the Howard of old and be the centerpiece, the three-time Defensive Player of the Year patterned his game after Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons legend Dennis Rodman.

“The reason why I chose Dennis (as my favorite player) because later on in my career when I got to the Lakers, I just really had one job,” Howard said, in an appearance on the Legends of Sport podcast.

“It was that Dennis Rodman job. Be that energy. Be that antagonist,” Dwight added. “The person who’s going to get into somebody’s head, you’re gonna make somebody flip out. Just go get every rebound. So I dyed my hair purple and got locks. I got this whole persona going. Dennis Rodman is one of those people who always lets his personality show. He doesn’t care what anybody said.”

Rodman is easily one of the best rebounders and defenders of his generation. His career started out with the Detroit Pistons, where he was a core player of the team’s rough and tough system.

With his help, Detroit won back-to-back championships in 1989 and 1990.

As he approached the twilight of his career in the mid-90s, he joined the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls. Analysts disapproved of the trade, believing that Dennis would ruin the team’s chemistry due to his unpredictable nature.

But lo and behold, Rodman helped Chicago complete another three-peat, all while maintaining his wild-child persona on and off the court.

Defending the Joker

Perhaps Howard’s best performance as a Laker came in the 2020 Western Conference against Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets. Jokic had come into his own as a true superstar then.

It was obvious to the Lakers’ coaching staff that to stop the Nuggets, they had to contain the Joker.

That assignment belonged to Howard, who combined his inherent defensive instincts with Rodman’s genius to get into Jokic’s head. The Lakers and Nuggets meal rooms were just across from one another in the 2020 Orlando Bubble.

Dwight recalled staring into Jokic’s eyes every time he saw him. During the 2020 WCF, Howard turned things up a notch.

“Every time I stood up on the bench, he was looking over there; every time he got ready to go into the game, I would run to the scorer’s table just to tell him, ‘Hey, every time you get in, I’m right here with you.’ And it worked out great for our team and also myself. It was very tough because that was a different role for me, so I’m glad I had the opportunity to learn from that and it worked out well,” Dwight said.

Howard’s performance in that series earned him the respect of peers and NBA fans worldwide. After dispatching the Nuggets in five games, the Lakers went on to the NBA Finals to win the championship against Miami Heat in six games.

After years of trials and tribulations, Howard finally earned the right to call himself an NBA Champion.

This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Sep 15, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

“It was a Dennis Rodman job” – Dwight Howard on his mindset during the 2020 championship run with the Lakers

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