Dwight Howard sends awesome retirement message for former Lakers guard Rajon Rondo

Recently, former Boston Celtics (and Los Angeles Lakers) point guard Rajon Rondo announced his retirement from the NBA, per ESPN. Over the course of his NBA career, Rondo established himself as one of the best passers the game of basketball has ever seen and also won multiple NBA championships, first with the Celtics back in 2008 and then with the Lakers as part of the NBA Bubble during the 2019-2020 season.

Rondo announced the news during an appearance on the “All The Smoke” podcast.

“What a time, it was definitely something that I never took for granted when I was in the game,” said Rondo. “I loved every minute of it, and I appreciate the brotherhood that I was able to share and bond and grow with over the years. I’ve learned so much in this game and it’s made me the man who I am today. … I tell people all the time, this wasn’t a dream of mine, it was a goal. I was able to lock in, stay disciplined, I didn’t party a lot in college. But it was worth the sacrifice of me getting to where I wanted to be in life.”

One person who is happy for Rondo is none other than his former Lakers teammate, Dwight Howard, who took to his account on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter, to express his thoughts.

“16 years is not easy to do! Championships are hard to win… congrats on an amazing career my brother!” wrote Howard, along with a picture as well as some highlight clips of the two together during their Lakers’ tenure.

An unlikely duo in Los Angeles

Although that 2020 Lakers squad was of course headlined by LeBron James and Anthony Davis, fans won’t soon forget the contributions of several valuable pieces off the bench, which included both Rondo and Howard for the team’s dominant playoff run in the Bubble.

For his part, Howard provided a degree of defense and intensity for a Los Angeles squad that was already brimming with those attributes before his arrival. The big man was a large part of the Lakers’ defensive strategy against Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic, who suffered through one of the worst playoff series of his career against Los Angeles thanks in no small part to Howard’s contribution.

Meanwhile, Rondo used his otherworldly basketball to consistently dissect opposing defenses, acting as a coach on the floor, in some ways filling in the floor general role that LeBron James usually embodied when the king took his talents to the bench for a breather.

Rondo and Howard also produced several highlights during their time together in Los Angeles, as Howard consistently found himself on the receiving end of perfectly-placed lobs from Rondo. Although both were well past their athletic primes by the time they teamed up with the Lakers, it was truly inspiring to see the duo able to reinvent themselves and still find ways to contribute to winning basketball on the game’s biggest stage at Disney.