Ex-NBA star Dwight Howard made the news headlines once again this week when he appeared on a podcast on Tuesday recalling a situation in which the league silenced him. According to the big man, he posted ‘Free Palestine’ on Twitter back in 2014, and immediately received many calls of people ordering him to delete the tweet.
According to the veteran, even commissioner Adam Silver asked him to take it down. “A couple years ago, when I played for the Houston rockets, I tweeted ‘Free Palestine,’ and I dang near got kicked out the league for it,” he told podcast host Ray Daniels, just as an example of how the NBA controls what players tell the public.
The 39-year-old recalled that he made the post after having a long conversation with Palestinian fans in Houston, and simply wanted to express his support for their community. “They asked me to just bring some awareness to what’s going on in their country,” he said.“I want people to know the struggles y’all having. I don’t think it’s wrong. So I tweet ‘Free Palestine.’”
Dwight Howard reveals NBA commissioner clamped down his “Free Palestine” message.https://t.co/lj90FtKIEW
— Fastbreak Hoops (@FastbreakHoops5) January 9, 2025
Howard then added: “Less than 10 minutes after I tweet that, I get a call from the commissioner of the NBA, agents, people working with my foundation at the time — ‘You gotta erase this tweet, you, gotta take this down’ — I’m like, ‘what did I do that was so bad?”
Even though the NBA has come out to call his story “categorically false,” Dwight guarantees that this is the way the league normally operates. “When you’re in the league, you’ll be in that place where, ‘If I say too much, if I say something, I may not get a job no more.’ I gotta hold my tongue, and that’s so hard to do,” he said.
This recent story spread by the three-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year seems to concern a post he made more than a decade ago, while Israel and Hamas were engaging in a way back in 2014.
His account brings great relevancy to this day, as Israel is once again fighting a way with this terror group, following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack when they invaded southern Israel. War began once again as the Palestinian group killed around 1,200 and kidnapped 251 hostages.
