CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER ELEVEN As much as he smiles, Dwight Howard likes to make other people smile. He entertains his teammates with impressions of other players—he’s especially proud of his Shaquille O’Neal—of his coaches, and of his favorite cartoon character, Dory from Finding Nemo. He plays practical jokes and practices his dance moves before the weight room mirror. He pokes fun at his friends. Once, he joked that his teammate, six-foot Jameer Nelson, wasn’t tall enough to go on a new roller-coaster ride in Disney World.
“[He] didn’t meet the requirements, so he had to stay home,” he said with a wide grin.
Nelson had the last laugh, though—a video that showed Dwight hollering and screaming in terror throughout the ride.
On March 5, 2006, Dwight himself was given a reason to smile. That’s when he learned he had been named one of the twenty-three players of Team USA. If the team played well enough in international competitions in the next two years, they would go to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China.
“I always wanted to play in the Olympics,” Dwight said.
Team USA traveled to Japan in August for the FIBA (Fédération Internationale de Basketball) World Championships. He and his teammates, who included NBA stars Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Chris Paul, and Carmelo Anthony, won the bronze medal. Dwight started in five of the nine matches and contributed averages of 7.3 points, 4.7 rebounds, and a team-high 1.3 blocks.
After the FIBA World Championships, Dwight returned to Florida for training camp. Not surprisingly, he was showing signs of fatigue. The Orlando coaches limited his minutes during the practice sessions and the preseason games to give him time to recover from his travels.
That rest must have done him good because when he hit the court for the Magic’s season opener against the Chicago Bulls, he was simply outstanding. He and his teammates pounded the Bulls in the first quarter, racking up 32 points to Chicago’s 20. Four of those points were thanks to Dwight Howard’s thunderous dunks. He also added points with a hook shot, a short jumper, and two free throws to reach double digits in just six minutes of play.
His hand stayed hot throughout the remaining thirty-six minutes, too. In all, he went 9-for-12 from the floor and hit 9 out of 10 free throws for a total of 27 points. Those free throws pleased him because he’d spent time perfecting the shot. His fans and teammates were happy with his other stats, too: 11 total rebounds, 3 assists, 2 blocks, and 1 steal. Even his opponents had to admire such an output.
“[He’s going to] make it tough for anyone who comes into this building to get a win,” Bulls center Ben Wallace said after the game.
Dwight really hit his stride mid-November. So did the Magic. Out of sixteen games played, they lost just four. Half of the victories were won by margins of ten or more points. Dwight was posting double-doubles night after night, including three games of more than 20 points and 20 rebounds.
The first of his 20-20 performances was particularly sweet because it came versus Kevin Garnett and the Minnesota Timberwolves.
“When I play against KG, it’s like, ‘Okay, this is the guy I watched growing up, wanted to be like,’ ” Howard said after helping defeat the T’wolves 109–98. “So I’m always excited to be on the court when I get to play KG.”
Dwight himself gave people plenty to be excited about in the next weeks, including the game played on the night after his twenty-first birthday.
The match was against the Philadelphia 76ers. With just a minute and twenty seconds remaining, the score stood at 82–81 in Orlando’s favor. A free throw by Grant Hill made it 83–81.
Hill missed his second free throw but darted forward, got his own rebound, and dished to Keyon Dooling. Dooling went up—but missed the shot!
Luckily, Howard snared the rebound and banked in a short shot. Two points, his twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of the night! The Magic were up by four!
The Sixers shaved that small lead to the merest whisker, but it was too little, too late. Final score: Orlando 86, Philadelphia 84.
Unfortunately for Magic fans, such victories were not the norm for December. From a 12–4 record in November, their win-loss column dropped to 18–14. In January it fell to 24–22, including eight losses out of their last ten games.
The Magic desperately needed a morale-boosting game. They got it from Dwight Howard in a game against the San Antonio Spurs and the Spurs’ All-Star center, Tim Duncan. The Spurs dominated for most of the game, sometimes by as many as 16 points. In the third quarter, however, Orlando put the pedal to the metal and roared up alongside San Antonio to tie it all at 80 apiece.
Yet try as they might, the Magic couldn’t take the lead. Then, with just five seconds remaining in the final quarter, Jameer Nelson stuck a thirteen-foot jumper to tie it up again. Moments after that, Dwight leaped sky-high and blocked the game-winning shot by Tony Parker! The ball cannoned into Nelson’s hands—and Orlando immediately called a twenty-second time-out.
There were only 0.8 seconds left on the clock. “That’s plenty of time for a pass, a good look, and a shot,” one commentator noted.
Hedo Turkoglu prepared to inbound the ball near the top of the key. Dwight waited near the baseline with Duncan right on top of him. When the ref blew his whistle, Dwight circled around Duncan and back to the far side of the hoop. Duncan tried to follow, but he was a step too late.
Turkoglu lofted a pass at the basket. Howard jumped, arms outstretched, and boom!
“Alley-oop! Howard at the buzzer!” the commentator cried as Dwight bounced with happiness. “Dwight Howard climbs through the roof to put the Magic up!”
It was the first game-winning basket of his career, and left him with 30 points for the night. “Dwight had to go up and touch the clouds over Timmy,” marveled one San Antonio player. “It was a remarkable play.”
The NBA All-Star break came soon after that game. Dwight had played in the Rookie Challenge his first year in the NBA and for the Sophomore team in his second season. This year, he played for the East team and took part in the Slam Dunk contest where he performed his now-famous sticker slap. He gained fame of a different sort when, during practice, he launched into an impromptu dance-off with Shaquille O’Neal and LeBron James that had fans roaring with laughter. In the game itself, Dwight came off the bench to tally 20 points and 12 boards. It was an impressive double-double but did little to change the game’s 153–132 West over East outcome.
After the break, the Magic slumped. They dropped thirteen of twenty games to send their record to 34 wins and 39 losses by the end of March. Dwight slumped, too, particularly on offense. In mid-March, he made 13 of 16 shots; the next night, he made just 2 out of 10. Just like the year before, their chance of reaching the playoffs was slipping away.
Then something happened. The Magic started winning again, and Dwight Howard was a big reason why. On April 7, he hit 31 points and pulled down 11 rebounds in a crushing 116–89 win over Memphis. Amazingly, 18 of his points came from dunks.
“This should help him get his confidence back,” Grant Hill commented after that performance.
Howard certainly seemed confident a week later when he made all but one of his seventeen attempted shots in the first half of a game against Philadelphia. He finished the evening with a career-high 35 points, plus 11 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 steals in the 104–87 blowout victory. It was his fifth consecutive double-double and his fifty-seventh of the season.
“I’m just happy I got a chance to really open up tonight and get going,” Howard said with a grin.
His happiness that night was nothing compared to the joy he felt on April 18, the last game of Orlando’s regular season. The Magic beat their homestate rivals, the Miami Heat, 94–68 to end with 40 wins and 42 losses. It was their best record since Dwight had joined the team and good enough to land them the eighth slot in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
That same night, Dwight entered the NBA history books as the second player after Wilt Chamberlain to post more than a thousand rebounds and a 60 percent or better shooting average in the same season. The Magic would need him to continue chalking up such strong stats in the postseason if they were to stand a chance against their first opponents, the Detroit Pistons.