Dwight Howard’s New Level of Unearned Confidence

Will Ferrell has already played a basketball hero in Semi-Pro. Otherwise he’d be perfect to play Houston Rockets center Dwight Howard in the movie “Dwight Howard’s Super High Regard for Himself, Considering He’s Been To One Finals, and Has No Championships.” The title needs work, but the screenplay has been floating around LA recently, where it figures to last longer than Howard did there (he left after a dismal year). Ferrell likes to play characters with what he calls “unearned confidence,” making the former SNL comedian perfect to assay Howard–with a little expert CGI to help with the resemblance, of course.

Ferrell’s characters also tend to say outrageous, indefensible, clearly untrue things. Voila! Check out Dwight Howard’s deep thoughts after Chandler Parsons took his 16 points, 5.5 rebounds and four assists a game to Dallas: “[Losing Parsons] won’t affect us at all,” Howard said. Why not? Well, he told the Associated Press: “We have myself and James [Harden],” Howard said. “We have the best center and the best two guard in the game on the same team. It’s on us.” Yet there is no word that the NBA is switching to a two-on-two format for next season. Still five-on-five. James Harden is very good indeed–he was All-NBA first team last year, so Howard can’t be faulted there. Howard himself was not so highly rated: he was on the All-NBA second team last year, and third team the year before that. So not everybody agrees that he’s the “best center” in the game. Then there is the matter of winning playoff games, which hasn’t been on the big man’s resume recently. BTW, Howard shot 54.7% from the free throw line last season. 49.2% the year before. Ferrell, it’s rumored, usually makes one of two. But he says he makes them all.