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Candace Buckner
National Basketball Association, with a special focus on the Washington Wizards.
Dwight Howard looked straight ahead, never knowing if he could hear the whistling sound.
Barely in the middle of his regular season debut, Howard experienced what a Washington Wizards player was in the 2018-1919 season.
Friday night, Howard started the match with enthusiasm, highlighting the encouragement of the Capital One Arena crowd. After throwing a dunk in both hands when he was fouled in the first moments of the Wizards' clash with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Howard pointed his two index fingers to the ceiling. The fans roared because they had not seen a big man from Wizards do a play like this all season.
But that moment was fleeting – and the Wizards had yet to go on defense and play the defense. The team's effort to this end has the power to turn worship into impetuous hots. At half-time, Howard kept his eyes fixed on the tunnel – just like his teammates – while coming out of the ground at home under the flood of taunts.
While Howard gave a glimpse of what the team had missed from his starting center, as evidenced by this first game and his 20 points on 7 shots out of 8, his first action with the Wizards is over. by a defeat of 134-111.
Even with Howard, who was 6 feet 11 feet, patrolling in the middle, the Wizards could not stop the Thunder. The spiral wizards (1-7), who lost their fifth straight, still look irreparable on the defensive side.
[Downward spiral continues for Wizards in blowout loss to Thunder]
In one way or another, the Thunder (4-4), playing on the second night of a back-to-back set, had new legs to hit 15 points and get connect to 57% of the land.
Howard played 23 minutes because the game was uncontrollable in the fourth quarter and he only had three rebounds.
"I thought we had a good start. Clearly, Dwight was a bright spot, "said coach Scott Brooks. "Very well played for his first match. It's good to see. We hoped that he would come in and set the tone, and I thought he was doing it.
In attack, Howard was the most effective threat of the team. Before the match, he could not stand still, like an anxious player who tries to minimize the pre-game rituals of a season.
Shortly after the national anthem, Howard began to throw himself layers of the panel. Then he left the field and headed for the first row of seats behind the bench, remembering that he needed to stretch his legs. All the while, a Migos song repeated the question of the night: "Are you ready?"
Howard may have had some hectic energy, but he looked more than ready for his first match in six months. This first game, when the balance of the ground and the Wizards' ball movement created an easy dunk, also marked the first time for some time that Howard unleashed his ability to jump in front of a crowd.
Howard could very well have immersed himself in in-camera training sessions with the staff of the team or even with his two personal trainers while he rehabilitated himself after an injury to a piriformis. But Howard, a former Slam Dunk champion, said the jump only recently returned to his repertoire.
"Last week, I could not really jump that much," he said on Thursday. "Now I can climb a little higher than me, so it will continue to progress. I think it was the most important thing I was trying to recover: just my legs. "
Howard saved his jumps at the end of the team's morning session. He instead worked on his three corner corners. Although Howard joked and photographed an actor from the "Creed" sequel (the director and the senior villain were invited to attend the sorcerer's training session), he took his three pointers seriously.
"Are you shooting?" Howard asked his teammate Kelly Oubre Jr., who stood motionless to his left. "So can you get out of the way so I can shoot?
With his teammates out of his way, Howard has launched more than three. He continued shooting during a private session with coaches Ed Downs and Justin Zormelo. He was still starting one hour before the end of the match.
Yet when the game began, Howard gave up his dream of playing five and devoting himself to the inside. During his first nine minutes, he rode on the rim for three dunks. His first prompted fans to believe again, that maybe when Howard pointed to the sky, it meant everything was up.
They were not. At the end of the fourth quarter, Howard, who said he still felt pain due to muscle fatigue from his buttocks, was flat on his back near the sideline.
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