CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER ONE “The Miracle Child.”
That’s what Sheryl and Dwight David Howard called their newborn son, Dwight David Howard Junior. They had long hoped for another child to join their family. But after several miscarriages, it seemed that their hopes would not be realized.
Then Sheryl became pregnant again. On December 8, 1985, she gave birth to Dwight.
“My dad always told me that I was a blessing,” Dwight once told a reporter, “that I was called upon to do something in life.”
The family lived in Atlanta, Georgia. Dwight Senior worked as a Georgia state trooper and volunteered as the athletics director at a small private school, Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy (SACA), where Sheryl taught physical education.
SACA’s mission, to mix faith with learning, reflected the kind of education the Howards wanted their children to receive, so Dwight Junior entered as a kindergartner. He took to the school, its Christian ideals, and his classmates right away. He made friends who would stay with him throughout his school years and beyond.
While education and spiritual guidance were the primary focus at the school, SACA offered a wide variety of athletics, too. “My childhood was always centered around playing a lot of different sports,” Dwight once said in an interview. “It was about playing every sport and staying active.”
Dwight Junior was just three years old when he first picked up a basketball. In doing so, he was following in a family tradition. Sheryl had been the captain of the first women’s basketball team at Morris Brown College. Dwight Senior coached youth basketball teams. Dwight Junior’s sister played throughout school, too, and in college she helped her team to three Division II conference championships.
It’s not surprising that Dwight took to basketball like a duck to water. But what was unusual was how much effort he put into teaching himself how to play. To improve his dribbling, for example, he sometimes set up chairs or orange cones on his street and wove through them with his eyes closed.
Dwight played other sports, but as he grew older, he realized that he preferred one above all others. “When I was about ten, I became really serious about basketball. I told my dad that I wanted to make it to the NBA.”
Dwight Senior had been his son’s basketball coach for more than four years. He had watched Dwight Junior develop as a player and teammate, and he believed that his boy just might have what it took to make it in the big league. He told Dwight that he’d help him achieve his goal in any way he could. Sheryl echoed those sentiments with just as much enthusiasm.
But was Dwight Junior really willing to put in the hard work necessary to make his dream come true?
Dwight Senior usually thought so. There were other times, however, when he would glance at his son during a practice or a game and just shake his head and sigh. It wasn’t that Dwight Junior was misbehaving, or slacking off, or making the same foolish mistakes over and over. But he was doing something that made his father just as crazy.
“Stop smiling out there!” Dwight Senior would yell. “Why can’t you take the game seriously?”
The thing was, Dwight Junior did take the game seriously—so seriously, in fact, that after a loss, he’d often break down and cry. Defeat bit him to the quick, but it also made him even more determined to win the next game.
Ten-year-old Dwight played basketball as often as he could. He joined every team possible, in school and with the local Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) league. He attended summer basketball camps. When organized games weren’t available, he pitted himself against older basketball players in pickup games.
“They were a lot smarter and stronger,” he remarked of his experience as a fourth grader playing with eighth graders, “so I learned. They pushed me around a lot to see where my head was and see if I would back down.”
Driven by his willingness to learn, Dwight continued to improve. By middle school, his ball-handling skills, quick feet, and heads-up play made him a natural at point guard. Yet as good as he was on the court, Dwight recognized that his physical abilities were only part of what he’d need to reach his dream.
“The Bible says to have your vision and make your plan so the whole world can see it,” Dwight said. So when he was in eighth grade, he wrote up his plan on a page of notebook paper. He worded his goals like a proclamation in the Bible. Among them were the following:
And it shall and will come to pass that SACA will win the 2002–2003, 2003–2004 state championship.
And it shall and will come to pass that Dwight Howard II will be the Number 1 draft pick in the NBA draft.
And it shall and will come to pass that Dwight Howard II will surpass LeBron James for the best high school basketball player, college player, and NBA player.
It shall and will come to pass that the NBA will be run by the standards of God.
Amen.
Dwight tacked the notepaper to his wall, where he would see it every day, a constant reminder of what he believed himself capable of achieving.
Not everyone believed in him the way he believed in himself. Sometimes even his closest friends doubted his ability.
Dwight squashed those doubts when he was in eighth grade. At five feet, ten inches, he was one of the tallest boys in the school. But his build remained that of a skinny adolescent. None of his friends thought that he had enough muscle to dunk.
Dwight told his friends to meet him at a local basketball court. When they were all assembled, he grabbed a ball and said, “Watch this!” To his friends’ astonishment and delight, he leaped sky-high and dunked!
“It didn’t move the rim or the backboard, and the net didn’t even shake,” Dwight recalled. “I was still happy about it, though.”
So were his friends, many of whom were also his teammates. If Howard can dunk the ball in eighth grade, they must have been thinking, imagine what he’ll be like when he’s playing on the high school team!
That Dwight would make the SACA varsity basketball team seemed obvious. After all, he was already outplaying many of his older classmates. But not many believed that the scrawny twelve-year-old from an unknown Christian school was NBA material.
A few years later, however, people found themselves looking at Dwight Howard in a whole new way.