Dwight Howard’s Taiwanese Team Gets Into Massive Brawl

The former NBA center put up a big statline before being ejected after the fracas.

After spending nearly two decades in the NBA with seven different franchises, Dwight Howard isn’t ready to hang up his sneakers. The potential Hall of Famer is currently playing for the Taoyuan Leopards in Taiwan’s T1 League, though the season hasn’t gone as he probably hoped, as his longtime rival Shaquille O’Neal recently pointed out. 

The team is currently 4–11, sitting in last place in the six-team league.

The Leopards scored a rare win on Sunday, beating the Taiwan Beer HeroBears 120–108, but the game did not come without serious controversy. Late in the fourth quarter, Leopards point guard Chen Hsiao-Jung appeared to hit HeroBears’ Chiang Yu-An with an elbow, leading to a raucous brawl that included one HeroBears coach quickly jumping into the fray.

Ultimately, 12 players including Howard—who was largely a bystander—were ejected from the game according to Taiwan News, which called it the “biggest fight in Taiwan’s T1 League history.” The brawl wound up delaying the game by 20 minutes as the referees sorted things out and made a decision on the ejections.

Howard continues to impress individually, even as his team struggles. He scored 28 points, adding 14 rebounds and seven assists in 35 minutes in the win.