Dwight Howard seems to have been disliked by a lot of his teammates and he hung around for so long when his skills had diminished that it obscures his legacy. He was an absolute beast of a player for a long time and is HOF worthy.
As a Knicks fan, Melo is a big step down from Howard. He was a very skilled scorer but not so skilled as to make up for the fact that he never made his teammates or team better. The title with the Orangemen probably helps him more than any other recent player in terms of his qualification as a first ballot inductee.