A wound is still fresh for Dwight Howard, one of the victims of defraudment. On Above The Rim this week, Dwight sounded in physical pain saying, “That one hurt,” reliving the incident. It wasn’t just that he lost $7 million. It was what that money was meant for. A lesser-known fact about DH12 is that he wanted to be a WNBA team owner. He was all set to do that for his daughters, Layla and Jayde. But that wouldn’t transpire.

When Howard told the guest, Joe Smith and his co-hosts that the largest lump sum he lost was $7 million, the guys were reeling. “It was a part of my agent,” Howard reveals without taking a name. The hosts then asked him how it felt when he found out and Howard said on his show, “My mental was, I wanted to find him and beat the hell out of him. Like, I wanted to k–l him.” 

The crew could understand the sentiment and were amazed how Howard’s ex-agent thought he could get away with stealing $7 million. So Howard then went on to disclose what went down behind the scenes and how his trust was broken.

“See it was like a group of people who was all in it together,” Howard said before disclosing how he was oblivious to their schemes when he sought their help. “I was looking to buy the Atlanta Dream, the basketball team for women. And so I was like ‘man, I want to really do this ‘cuz I got two daughters, one day they’re going to want to play basketball, I can set it up to where they can play for the Atlanta Dream.'”

Both of Howard’s daughters, Layla and Jayde, were born in 2010 to two different women. Howard recently won custody of Layla from Tiffany Render. Jayde’s primary custody is reportedly with her mother, Hope Alexa. Very little is known about them and if they have their dad’s basketball skills, but the Lakers champ was prepared.

“We put this little group together and at the time I’m still playing, the NBA said that I couldn’t own the team outright myself… So I was like okay, I can have a group be like the face of the team right now and then I could be behind the scenes making all the decisions.” He doesn’t specify when this was, but he said he consulted his team’s GM and owners. That was how serious he was about it.

With everything in place, Howard gave the ‘group’ the money to buy into Dream. “The next thing I know I didn’t hear from the people.” His supposed business partners ghosted him and he found out from the news that someone else bought the WNBA team. Howard knew then that his money was stolen.

He was obviously devastated but so was his family. He had told his mom he was buying the team and she already bought season tickets to Dream games. He’s never spoken about this situation before and now it’s clear he’s still devastated by it.

Dwight Howard’s silent fury for ex-agent

Though Dwight Howard doesn’t take any names, his narration matched that of an incident involving his ex-agent, Charles Briscoe.

Briscoe was arrested in Katy, Texas in March 2023 on felony charges for scamming NBA pros. He was also an agent to Michael Beasley and Chris Duarte along with Howard. According to The Athletic, he had convinced one player into transferring $7 million as a supposed payment to become the “full owner” of a pro women’s basketball team. The player and the team weren’t named then.

Howard now seems to be talking about it with a deep sense of betrayal. “I really trusted this agent because he’s my agent, he has a duty to tell the truth and be honest with me.” Instead of buying a team for his kids, Howard used this as a lesson to them, “The world don’t care about you.” 

A financial firm sued Briscoe for misrepresenting his supposed work with Howard a year before his indictment. Howard didn’t comment on it even then and silently got another agent. This is the first time he’s spoken about it and it shows that contrary to his silence, he’s furious.