Howard comes in line following George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O'Neal and sure, even Pau Gasol to a certain extent as the next big man to carry the Lakers into the future.
It's still unknown as to whether or not he's going to stick around past this season (although it seems incredibly likely), which means he's going to have a handful years at least to carve out his legacy in comparison to the rest of Los Angeles' bigs.
Where Howard has been criticized to no end over the course of the past year, he still remains the best all-around center in the NBA, at least in terms of output.
Sure, he might have an ugly offensive game at times, and he hasn't fit together well with many of his new teammates, but his defensive game has gotten back on the right track, he's scored when the Lakers need him to and his rebounding never left.
Howard's bad games are ones in which he has obvious lapses here and there, but he still tends to put together a fine game as far as the box score goes.
However, that's why watching games actually means something. The personality (I don't quite want to call it an attitude) Howard has seems to be somewhat detrimental to his overall game, even though he generally ends up coming across as a genuinely happy person.
Looking through the pages of Lakers history, Howard obviously has a ton of work to do, but he's got at least one thing in common with all of the noteworthy centers throughout Lakers history.
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Article Source: Bleacher Report - Los Angeles Lakers
