CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER SEVEN On April 15, 2004, an audience of five hundred people packed into the gymnasium of Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy to hear Dwight Howard make the most important announcement of his life.
The gathering began with prayer. Then Dwight, his eyes full of tears, took to the podium and told the world that he was entering the NBA draft.
“I promise I’ll be a ballplayer you’ll be proud to watch, and a young man you’ll be proud to know,” he solemnly vowed.
Dwight revealed later that he had made his decision to skip college even before his senior year began. “I didn’t tell my teammates,” he added. “I didn’t make a big deal about going to the NBA, because I didn’t want my school or my team just getting attention because I was going to the NBA.”
Most basketball watchers believed that Dwight would be one of the top three picks in the draft. Dwight and his family hoped that he would be number one. But no one would know which team had the chance to choose him until May 26, when the results of the NBA draft lottery were announced.
The draft lottery system is a combination of team rankings, carefully calculated odds, and pure chance. There are thirty teams in the NBA. The fourteen with the lowest records take part in the draft. The worst-ranked team is given the number one slot, and so on down through the ranks. While the first slot team isn’t guaranteed the first pick, its chances of getting the first pick are greater than the others’ because of how the lottery is set up.
This is where the calculations and chance come in. Fourteen Ping-Pong balls, numbered one through fourteen, are put into a lottery machine. Each team is assigned combinations of four numbers such as 1-2-3-4 or 7-10-13-14 (the order doesn’t matter). The team with the worst record is given the greatest number of combinations, 250 chances out of a possible one thousand, with the fourteenth team in line receiving only five.
At the appointed time, four balls drop into the chute. The numbers on those balls are then matched to the team holding that four-digit combination. That lucky team is then awarded the first overall draft pick.
On May 26, 2004, the four numbered Ping-Pong balls matched a number combination held by the Orlando Magic. Fans of the Florida team were overjoyed. In 2003–2004, they had suffered through one of the franchise’s most dismal showings, a record of just 21 wins out of 82 games. They needed power, and now they had the chance to get it.
Dwight Howard was on Orlando’s radar as a top choice, but so was Emeka Okafor of the University of Connecticut. Okafor had recently jumped into the limelight as the NCAA’s Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four for his remarkable performances during the March Madness collegiate playoffs. Howard was the more powerful athlete of the two, but Okafor was the more experienced player thanks to his years in college.
In the days leading up to the draft, the Magic kept mum about who they preferred. “Neither is in front of the other,” general manager John Weisbrod said.
Howard had plenty to distract him from the upcoming draft, including his high school graduation. Around that same time, he also appeared on the cover of ESPN: The Magazine.
“It was sweet,” he recalled. “I remember looking at it and saying, ‘Man, I’m in high school and I’m on the cover.’ Our school was so small that once one person saw the cover, the whole school saw it.”
His issue of ESPN: The Magazine hit the stands on June 7. Three weeks later, Dwight, his family, and a busload of his classmates and their parents drove nineteen hours to New York City for the draft.
Dwight remained hopeful that he would fulfill his longtime goal of being the number one pick. “I bring everything to the table,” he told reporters, even as he noted that he needed to work on his overall strength. Still, he added, “you don’t have to worry about me quitting on you just because I’m out of high school.”
The evening of June 24, Dwight sat at a table in Madison Square Garden with his family. His body language—eyes darting, mouth set in a straight line, fingers twitching—spoke volumes about how nervous and excited he was.
At seven o’clock, the lights dimmed. A spotlight shone on the stage, where a gray-haired man was walking toward a podium. The man was NBA commissioner David Stern.
Stern cleared his throat. “With the first pick in the NBA 2004 draft,” he said, “the Orlando Magic select Dwight Howard out of Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy in Atlanta, Georgia.”
The crowd went wild. Dwight broke into a mile-wide grin. He hugged his parents and shook hands with Okafor. Then he strode to the stage to shake Stern’s hand. “This feels so good,” he cried.
He knew he hadn’t been the odds-on favorite to be first pick, but he didn’t let that spoil the moment. Instead, he looked upon it as a challenge. “I want to go out there and prove all the doubters wrong,” he said.
Weeks after the draft, a fan asked Howard what his first reaction had been when he found out he was the first pick. Dwight’s answer said it all: “Thank God I finally made it!”