Dwight Howard announces retirement from basketball after divorce filing

Howard said he is focusing on family and community in his post-career, and will drop a documentary telling “the truth about everything.”

Following his divorce filing from Amy Luciani, Dwight Howard has announced he is retiring from the game of basketball to “pour into” his family and “give back to communities worldwide.”

The NBA champion last played professionally overseas in Taiwan in 2023 in his 20-year-long career, and his final NBA seasons were spent with the Los Angeles Lakers. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year, which is an honor that players receive at least two seasons after retirement. In his post, he explained that the retirement was not his choice.

“I know some of you might think I thought he already ‘retired’ but I didn’t… the game retired me! I still had more left to give ! Yeah I did play professionally for 20 years and Im grateful to be able to say that but I can’t lie seeing these other players still going at it at age 40 inspired me to want to keep trying but now I believe my duty will be to pass it down to the next generation,” he wrote in the Instagram caption.

Last week, Howard filed for divorce from Luciani, also named Amber Rose Howard. The news broke after Luciani posted a video where she accused him of having a drug problem, and said that his daughter had been taken away by Child Protective Services. The two have been married since January 2025, but Luciani filed for divorce six months into the marriage, eventually withdrawing her petition. Howard has also filed for divorce from Luciani before.

In this most recent filing, Howard claimed that his marriage to Luciani was “irretrievably broken,” and that the two were “living in a bona fide state of separation with no hope of reconciliation” and filed mutual restraining orders against one another. TMZ has reported on three separate 911 calls to Howard’s residence this month, at least two of which both parties have made to the authorities about the other person.

Howard may have more than a bone to pick with his estranged wife; he also used the retirement announcement to tease a new documentary about his life, and promised it would be revealing.

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“Also thank you to the Naysayers, the haters, the snakes, and people that came into my life to try to destroy me,” he said. “Because everytime yall did …it only made me stronger. When my documentary releases this year the world will know the truth about EVERYTHING! Then you will see how the sheltered little boy from college park Georgia who went to the same school from pre-k to 12th grade then straight to the NBA was taken advantage of by the world. But through it all still managed to keep SMILING.”