Howard had a successful career at Chicago Vocational Career Academy and can be seen playing in the high school basketball documentary Hoop Dreams. He left Michigan after his junior year, and was taken by the Washington Bullets fifth overall in the 1994 NBA Draft. Although the Fab Five final four appearance have been forfeited, he was not among the players called before the grand jury (Robert Traylor, Webber, Rose, Maurice Taylor, and Louis Bullock) in the University of Michigan basketball scandal and was not found to have received large amounts of money. He became the first NBA athlete who entered the draft early and still graduated along with his class. When Chris Webber, his teammate and friend from college, joined Washington that same season, many thought that the "Fab Five" would bode for a bright future for the Washington franchise. Together with Gheorghe Muresan, a 7 feet 7 inch (231 centimetres) Romanian center, Calbert Cheaney, a swingman from Indiana University, veteran point guards Mark Price and Robert Pack as well as the promising rookie Rasheed Wallace, many saw the Bullets as a secure playoff lock. But Webber, Price, and Pack missed almost the entire 1995-96 season due to injuries. That very season, the Bullets managed to pull off 39 victories, just barely missing the playoffs. The team's win total might have been considerably less had it not been for Howard's stellar offensive play. He became just the second player in Washington franchise history, after Bernard King, to post back-to-back 40-point games (against Boston on July 17, 1996 with 40, and at Toronto on July 19, 1996 with 42). Averaging 22.1 points, 8.1 rebounds and 4.4 assists, he was invited to the Eastern Conference's All-Star team for the first and only time in his career.