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When the NBA bubble crystallized and teams began to compromise, the Lakers had two players who were hesitant to join the team in Orlando, Florida. The first was Avery Bradley, who chose to stay home. The second was Dwight Howard, who finally decided that he would enter the bubble.
But it was not a decision taken lightly or without consequences.
“There is nowhere to go, there is no way to release anything,” Howard said. “Whatever feeling you may have, it’s like we’re stuck. So, just try to find joy in the fact that I have my son with me, the fact that all we have to do is win eight games to win a championship. … That is very difficult, seeing the same walls every day ”.
In June, Howard first expressed doubts about being away from family and friends for so long. He had spent the hiatus in Georgia with his children, one of whom lost their mother in March. Melissa Ríos, the mother of Howard’s 6-year-old son, died of complications from epilepsy. It made leaving the house even more difficult.
His son joined him in the bubble recently. When asked if he had thought about leaving the bubble since he was here, Howard avoided the question.
“The most important thing is to just observe everything that is going on around me,” Howard said. “Everything that is happening in the NBA, our team and around the world. So I’ll talk about some of the things at a later date. But right now, the focus is on us winning this championship and what I can do to help this team win. Obviously upon entering, I felt like ‘don’t do anything that might be a distraction’. But at this point, I’ll save those comments for a later date. ”
Wednesday was the first time in two months that Howard spoke to reporters, despite repeated requests.
When he spoke in July, he had just come out of quarantine and was subject to league scrutiny when he was reported for not wearing a mask on campus. Howard was frustrated the moment his masking habits or what he was doing in the bubble was paid attention to. He felt that it would be better to pay attention if it focused on issues of social injustice.
That was two weeks before the seeded games began and a full month before the playoffs began. When the league halted operations after the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play in Game 5 of their first-round series, the players met multiple times to determine how to advance. Howard had a particular interest in conversations and even participated in a smaller group meeting between select players from each team the next day.
He declined to speak about that Wednesday.
Distractions are hard to come by for Howard in the bubble, and for the past two weeks the basketball court hasn’t allowed much distraction from reality either. Coach Frank Vogel used Howard and fellow center JaVale McGee rarely against the Houston Rockets, who don’t play a center to face them. Howard played in just two of the five games the Lakers played against the Rockets for a total of 15 minutes and 39 seconds.
“It was extremely difficult, but I know my teammates still needed me no matter if I played 10 minutes or no minutes, just bringing energy,” Howard said. “So I try to suppress all the negative energy and try to turn it into something positive when I walk on the court or in the locker room or on the bench cheering for my teammates. It’s very difficult when you’re not playing sometimes, or it’s very easy to sulk and get angry and try to find ways to blame others, but I thought of a lot of positive things. ”
Ganguli reported from Los Angeles.
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