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Forward · 1992–97

Stephen Howard

Raised in Dallas, Howard was an Academic All-American at DePaul who left school fifth on its all-time scoring and rebounding lists. Undrafted in 1992, he earned a Jazz roster spot through a tryout and wore Utah colors in 1992-93, 1995, and 1998, with stops in San Antonio and Seattle in between, then played ten more years across 12 countries before retiring in 2008.

Midway Games used him as a model for NBA Jam, where he hides as a secret Jazz player behind Malone and Stockton. During the 1998-99 lockout he opened a Dallas juice store called Acappella — sing ten seconds of your favorite song at the counter and weekend customers got 25 percent off.

HOW HE CAME & WENTUndrafted, he talked his way into a rookie tryout and simply refused to be cut. His whole career was one-year contracts, and he came back in 1996-97 for the run to the Finals.

Full name
Stephen Christopher Howard
Utah Jazz tenure
1992–97
Position
Forward
Born
1970, Kansas City, Missouri
Height
6′9″ (206 cm)
Weight
225 lb (102 kg)
College
DePaul
Drafted
undrafted
Signature in the archive 1992-93 TOPPS STADIUM CLUB #388 UTAH JAZZ DEPAUL RC

No photograph of this signature is online yet.

With the Jazz

STEPHEN HOWARD · 1992–97 · PER GAME
SEASONTEAMGMPGPPGRPGAPGSPGBPGFG%3P%FT%
1992–93UTA495.32.11.20.20.30.2.376.642
1993–94UTA95.93.41.80.10.10.3.588.688
1996–97UTA428.33.61.80.20.30.2.573.597
JAZZ TOTAL3 SEASONS1006.62.91.50.20.30.2.485.625

Season by season, regular season, with this franchise only. More info: Basketball-Reference ↗  ·  Wikipedia ↗

Did you know

STEPHEN HOWARD · 6 NOTES
  • Went on to a long career as an ESPN college basketball analyst.
  • By his own account he was 6-foot-7 and forty pounds overweight at sixteen, an average athlete and an average student.
  • Raised in a household of educators, he became the only DePaul men's basketball player ever named first-team Academic All-American, and he did it twice.
  • He left DePaul as the school's all-time leader in free throws made, with 528.
  • After the NBA he played roughly a decade abroad across twelve countries, an entire career built on one-year contracts.
  • He was on the Jazz roster that reached the 1997 Finals, and credits Jerry Sloan for treating him exactly like the stars.