Dwight Howard
Dwight Howard
Dwight David Howard is an American professional basketball player for the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association. Howard, who plays center, had an outstanding high school career at Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy. He chose to forgo college and entered the 2004 NBA draft, and was selected first overall by the Orlando Magic. An eight-time All-Star, eight-time All-NBA team selection, five-time All-Defensive member, and three-time Defensive Player of the Year, Howard has been ranked consistently as one of the best...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth8 December 1985
CityAtlanta, GA
CountryUnited States of America
I expect us to be in the playoffs next year. We've got a great group of young guys and hopefully it will stay together. I think we can build off the finish we had to this season and do some great things next year.
Those two guys really stepped up tonight. Harrison is really tough to keep out of the low post. He's a strong guy. Granger really hit some big shots at key times, and he really seemed confident in his shots.
They can still go to me in the fourth quarter. It's just something I've got to keep working on. That's one of the areas I've got to gain more confidence in. Guys from other teams have told me they see that I'm too tense when I'm shooting free throws, when I'm concentrating so much instead of just letting it flow.
Coach is going to have our backs, good or bad, and I think guys appreciate that. It feels good that your coach is sticking up for you, letting them know how you feel. But at the same time, we need to just play the game instead of complaining and whining about the calls.
I'm very surprised that Iverson didn't make it. I think he was one of the best leaders the team had in the Olympics, but I think what they're trying to do for the Olympic team is get a group of guys that's willing to play team ball. I'm not saying that Iverson isn't like that, but I think they're doing a youth movement for the Olympics. I think the older legs are getting brittle, so they might need some young fresh legs out there.
We felt we really beat them down tonight.
The season isn't over. Maybe a trade, maybe the All-Star break, something will jump-start us. Hopefully, the switch will come on.
We really needed a win tonight, especially on the road. My mind-set tonight was to really focus in on bearing down and getting a win. I wanted to do everything in my will to get that win tonight.
We can win games at home. But we seem to lose focus on the road.
We had a lot of careless mistakes but I think that our defensive pressure was not there the whole game. We gave them easy baskets on our turnovers and that's one thing our coaches have been impressing on us all year.
That's the secret to success -- not worrying only about what's going to happen in the future, trying to work only on the stuff you can work on in the present.
It feels good. From the get-go, we knew we could beat these guys. The story all year has been us not playing up to our potential, not playing as well as we can. When we do that, we lose, and that happened a lot earlier in the season. We've learned that we have to come out with the kind of intensity we had tonight every night.
We just came out slow. We came out with the energy that we needed in the second half, but we didn't come out like we were ready to play tonight. We can't do that if we want to win.
Man, we're supposed to get wins like that, ... That's a tough loss.