[ad_1]
Smiling and shirtless, Dwight Howard posed with his teammates displaying four fingers, each digit representing how many wins the Lakers have in their first championship since 2010.
For Howard, it has been an incredibly long and difficult journey to get back to the top of the mountain to reach the NBA Finals.
In fact, it is a place you never thought you would be again.
“I didn’t think this was going to happen,” Howard said Saturday after the The Lakers secured their Western Conference Finals series against the Denver Nuggets in five games. “I am so grateful and grateful to have this opportunity. I am going to make the most of it.”
It’s been a tough two years for Howard.
In 2009, Howard was an Orlando Magic superstar who led his team to the Finals against the Lakers, where they lost a close seven-game series.
From that pinnacle, his career took a turn.
After leaving Orlando, he joined the Lakers for a disastrous one-season period in 2012-2013, in which Kobe Bryant questioned his seriousness and focus. Unhappy, he went to the Houston Rockets. Howard went on to play for five more teams, including two that quit. Last season, he played in just nine games for the Washington Wizards following back surgery.
On Saturday, after the purple and gold confetti fell on her shoulders, she couldn’t help but remember everything she had overcome.
“Everything that has happened in the last two years: the ups and downs, the surgeries, you know, all the things that have happened, this moment is very special,” Howard said. “And I just want to stay in the moment and I am grateful. I know our work is not complete yet, but I am very grateful to be in this position again. So I will make the most of every Moment I have on the court and with my teammates. team. Because I haven’t been to the Finals in 11 years. That’s a long time. And it’s one of the hardest things to do. So I’m very grateful. “
Howard found a home with the Lakers this season.
In LeBron James’ locker room, he was able to joke around without being perceived as a joke. He accepted his role and the team accepted it.
He continued to thrive, averaging 7.5 points and 7.3 rebounds in 18.9 minutes per game, infusing the team with a much appreciated boost of toughness and intensity from the bench.
But after The season was suspended on March 11 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tragedy struck his family. And when the NBA came up with a plan to resume play in a bubble in Florida in June, he wasn’t sure if he would join their team until the final moments.
The mother of Howard’s six-year-old son David died on March 27 of an epileptic seizure at her home in Calabasas at age 31. In an interview in May, Howard said it was “one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with. Cope,” adding that he didn’t know how to talk to his young son about it.
That pain was compounded by the horror of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis on May 25, prompting Howard to publicly question whether basketball would distract attention from the fight for social justice.
After much debate, Howard decided to join his teammates at Walt Disney World and finish what he had started.
But he fought inside the bubble.
He missed his family. He was stunned after someone reported him to the NBA’s information hotline for not wearing a mask. He was heavily criticized for saying he was against vaccines in an Instagram Live video. And then against the small-ball Houston Rockets in the second round of the playoffs, he barely had playing time.
Howard’s coaches and teammates praised him for staying engaged and cheering loudly from the bench, but he acknowledged that it was very difficult not to have basketball as an outlet during that span.
“It’s extremely difficult, to be in a place that I can’t get out of, I can’t see family, friends,” Howard said on September 16. “You are in the hotel. So it is very difficult, to see the same walls every day.”
But Howard got a break.
His son, David, joined him in the NBA bubble when players were allowed to join their families after the first round of the playoffs.
And in the Western Conference Finals, Howard again became an important piece of the team’s success. After impressing Lakers coach Frank Vogel with his toughness in Game 3, he started the last two games, finishing with 12 points and 11 rebounds in Game 4 and nine points and nine rebounds in Game 5.
“Dwight just brings energy, you know what I mean?” Vogel said after the Lakers’ 114-108 win in Game 4 on Sept. 24: “It fits what we want to embody in terms of being a team that plays harder than our opponent every night. It plays extremely tough and extremely physical. “.
Howard enjoys his success.
But even more, enjoy sharing it with David after everything they’ve been through.
“I think it will mean a lot to him,” Howard said. “He will never forget this moment and neither will I. I know that before when he first hit the bubble, he and I sat down and he said this is the worst year of his life and he asked me why life is so difficult. I don’t know how to answer that to him. But I try to be the right example for him. Every day. On the court, off the court. He pushes me to be the best I can be, so I’m thankful that I had this opportunity together, despite everything that happened in his young life. Just to make this moment very special for him. “
It’s been a crazy decade and a dizzying year for Howard.
But now he is about to play for his first championship in his 16-season career.
When asked what he had learned from all this, he did not hesitate to answer.
“It’s always being patient, being humble, being hungry and never giving up,” he said. “Other people can give you up, be it friends, family, through everything, jobs, but never give up.”
Howard said his favorite childhood book was “The Little Engine That Could.” And even as an adult, he has an image that two guys are often seen digging in a tunnel. One guy gives up when he’s about to reach for the diamonds, while the other keeps digging.
It is a reminder to himself that he should never quit.
“You never know how close you are to your breakthrough, so you have to keep pushing,” he said.
[ad_2]
