Dwight Howard is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but here’s why he’s sti

Look at Dwight Howard as he stands to be inducted into basketball’s Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, on Saturday. His shoulders are cut from stone; the rest of his body follows suit. He seems like a 7-foot Superman, which is why he wore the Man of Steel’s cape for a dunk contest he won (as a center).

A handful of years into his career, we figured him for an all-timer. The NBA’s No. 1 overall draft pick in 2004, Howard was, at age 23, the league’s Defensive Player of the Year and a top-five MVP candidate. He appeared invincible and practically was, defeating prime LeBron James en route to the 2009 NBA Finals.

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So, we measured him against the NBA’s untouchable centers — Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and Moses Malone — for the remainder of his career.

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Howard never got there. He was the league’s most dominant big man for a five-year run in Orlando, where he first earned his reputation as an unserious superstar. Never was that more evident than in April 2012, amid trade request drama of Howard’s own making, when he awkwardly hugged Stan Van Gundy during an interview in which the coach was confirming the report that his star player wanted him fired.

That reputation followed him to Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and Washington, where along the way he stopped performing as an All-Star before his 30th birthday. He smiled when situations called for a scowl, and as a result he clashed with teammates, including Kobe Bryant and James Harden, who were unwilling to cede offensive control to a co-star whose leadership and skillset could not command it.

“Dwight’s basketball IQ is not up to speed for him to be a…