CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER NINE On November 3, 2004, more than fifteen thousand hometown fans got their first glimpse of the Magic’s number one draft pick, Dwight Howard.
Orlando’s season opener was against the Milwaukee Bucks. The tip-off came at seven o’clock sharp. Moments later, the Magic’s Steve Francis got the ball. He attempted a three-pointer from twenty-six feet out. Clang! The shot missed, drawing groans from the fans.
But those groans instantly changed to cheers when Dwight Howard captured the rebound. He jumped to put the ball through the hoop but was fouled on the shot. He went to the line hoping to put Orlando on the board first.
Unfortunately, he missed both free throws. To add insult to injury, Milwaukee’s Dan Gadzuric nabbed the rebound after the second miss, passed to point guard Maurice “Mo” Williams, and then raced the length of the court. Williams fed him the ball and—wham!—Gadzuric slam-dunked for two points.
The Magic answered quickly with a three-pointer. The score seesawed between the evenly matched teams throughout the first half, finally landing at 50–47 in Orlando’s favor when the buzzer sounded.
After the break, the Magic took control. Grant Hill threaded in a sixteen-foot jumper. Less than a minute later, Dwight stuffed the ball for his first slam dunk of the regular season. Five minutes later, the Magic had chalked up 10 more points. Dwight punctuated the run with another dunk to make it Orlando 66, Milwaukee 53. The jubilant hometown fans leaped to their feet, applauding madly.
But those same fans soon turned quiet as they watched Milwaukee slowly chip away at Orlando’s lead until they knotted the score at 85 apiece. Dwight had a chance to score when he was sent to the line for two free throws. But as earlier in the game, he missed both. In fact, he didn’t make a single free throw the whole night!
Those missed shots could have been very costly. With just three seconds left in the game, the Magic were down by one. They needed a miracle if they were to win.
They got it on their final possession. Grant Hill inbounded the ball to Steve Francis at the top of the key. Francis beat Mo Williams to the hoop and, with a mere 0.2 seconds on the clock, tossed in a sweet layup. Orlando won 93–92!
Francis was the hero of the game, but every player had done his part. Even with his missed foul shots, Dwight had been outstanding. In just thirty-eight minutes of court time, he posted a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds, plus 4 blocks, 3 steals, and 2 assists! “Dwight Howard has arrived,” proclaimed one recap of the game.
Howard continued to impress the media, the fans, and his teammates throughout the month of November. He crashed the boards for double-digit rebounds. In one game, he nabbed an amazing 15 boards during an 18-point comeback run to beat the Los Angeles Lakers.
That same game saw him being “posterized” for the first time. A player is posterized when he attempts to defend against a dunk—and winds up looking foolish for even trying. On this night, Laker superstar Kobe Bryant was the dunker. As he drove to the hoop, Dwight slid under the basket, his arms raised over his head. Kobe didn’t even hesitate; he leaped on top of Dwight, threw the ball two-handed through the hoop, and then clung to the rim with his legs hooked onto Dwight’s shoulders!
“He baptized me,” Howard confessed with a chuckle, “brought me into the NBA and back to reality with one play…. It was like ‘Boom!’ That’s all I heard.”
Two weeks after that, Dwight posted his highest-scoring game, with 24 points, while helping Orlando beat the Atlanta Hawks. The last of those points came with less than two minutes left in the game. Grant Hill, at the top of the key, passed him the ball. Dwight leaped and jammed it through the hoop with a massive dunk.
“He is neither awed nor intimidated by anyone he plays,” the Magic’s coach, Johnny Davis, commented later. “You think about his age and the fact he was in high school five months ago…. [Now] he’s in there with the big boys.”
Howard started off December on a particularly high note when, in a 129–108 win over the Toronto Raptors, he threw down 4 dunks and hit 7 of 9 free throws for 15 points. He also chalked up 3 assists, 2 steals, and 2 blocks. But his best stat of all was in the rebounding column. That night, he pulled down 6 offensive and 14 defensive boards for a total of 20! At just a few days shy of his nineteenth birthday, he was the youngest player ever to nab 20 rebounds. And yet—
“I’m not satisfied,” he told reporters. “It’s too early in the season. I would love to get 20 rebounds in a close game, instead of a game that was out of reach for the other team.”
He got his wish two months later when the Magic faced the Atlanta Hawks on February 10. Orlando came on strong in the first quarter and racked up 31 points while holding the Hawks to just 15.
Orlando continued to dominate through the second quarter. But midway through the third, something happened. The Magic didn’t score a single point in three minutes and only added four more before the buzzer sounded. The Hawks, meanwhile, had narrowed the gap from 20 points to just 6!
A come-from-behind victory for the Hawks suddenly didn’t seem out of reach. If the Magic were to save the game—and their pride—they had to step it up.
They did just that. Steve Francis hit nine points midway. Grant Hill, Hedo Turkoglu, Kelvin Cato, and Doug Christie added to the score. So did Dwight, with a hoop-jarring dunk with less than four minutes remaining. The Hawks did their best to rally back, but it was no use. Final score: Orlando 101, Atlanta 96.
Dwight’s last quarter dunk brought his point total to 15 for the night. Fifteen points is nothing to sneeze at, but it was his 20 total rebounds that really stood out. He was the first rookie since Tim Duncan in 1997–1998 to post two 20-rebound games.
“He was a monster down there,” Steve Francis said admiringly.
Amazingly, it wasn’t the last time Dwight achieved that mark in his first season. Shortly after the All-Star break in February, during which he played against second-year players in the got milk? Rookie Challenge (the Sophomore team won 133–106), he posted his third 20-rebound game. Despite Dwight’s monumental effort, the match against the Toronto Raptors ended in defeat for the Magic.
In fact, many of Orlando’s games ended in defeat in the final weeks of the 2004–2005 season. Dwight himself played inconsistently. He had four games in which he scored less than five points; in three of those games he pulled in eight or fewer rebounds. Yet he also posted back-to-back games of double-digit scoring and rebounding, plus a third that saw him chalk up 29 points, the highest scoring of his career at the time.
Unfortunately, that 29-point game ended in yet another loss. Orlando’s front office had had enough. They fired coach Johnny Davis and temporarily replaced him with Chris Jent. Jent did his best to rally the team, but it was just too late. The Magic lost their final match to finish the season with 36 wins and 46 losses.
The team had known that 2004–2005 was going to be a building year. Now in the months ahead, they needed to grow even more to become a strong, well-oiled machine.
One of the most important parts of that machine was going to be Dwight Howard. Although he had stumbled at times, he had nevertheless shown his raw talent every time he stepped onto the court.
He had staying power—he was the first prep-to-pro player in NBA history to start in all 82 games in his rookie season. He had the talent—his 32 double-double games and averages of 12 points and 10 rebounds per game proved that. And he had the determination and the discipline to improve in the areas where he was weak. All he really lacked, Magic management believed, was experience.
Dwight himself knew that he wasn’t at the top of his game yet. That fact came home even more clearly when the votes for Rookie of the Year were tallied. He lost out to his draft-day rival, Emeka Okafor of the Charlotte Bobcats, and runner-up Chicago Bull Ben Gordon.
Howard was disappointed by his third-place showing, but his fellow Magic teammates had nothing but good things to say about their rookie.
“Give him another year,” Pat Garrity said, “and watch out!”