LOS ANGELES When asked that staple of sports-bar questions, "If you could have any player in Basketball to start a team with, who would you pick," Lakers coach Phil Jackson gave an answer that stunned many of us a few weeks ago. Dwight Howard, Jackson said, would be his first pick. Not his own Kobe Bryant and not LeBron James, who are universally believed to be the two best players on the planet, but Howard, the 6-foot-11 physical marvel who simply doesn't yet have the offensive game to match.
Game 1 of the NBA Finals showed why Jackson's choice, while shaped by his generational appreciation for giants, was nevertheless a stretch. While Kobe played with the concentration of a surgeon and the energy of a Tasmanian devil for the Lakers , Howard rather laconically wandered through the game on Thursday night and came up with the next-to-worst performance of his entire season. Here's why Howard, a legitimate candidate for MVP of these playoffs, cannot be mentioned yet in the same breath as Kobe or LeBron, or for that matter Dwyane Wade: one basket. That's right, 35 minutes and just one basket. Even if Orlando did a lousy job getting Howard the ball, he should have had more than one field goal because seeing as how the Magic missed 54 shots he had ample opportunity to grab an offensive rebound and throw it back in.
Orlando put forth a lousy effort overall, which to its credit the Magic admitted, and Howard specifically threw in a clunker. One bucket. One Basketball Hall of Famer in attendance said Howard played with absolutely no "grrrrrrrrrr!" whatsoever, and he's right. It seemed unfair when so many people, some within the Magic organization, question Howard's grit just before the playoffs. In a Sports Illustrated profile he was painted to a degree as being a lovable kid who might not have the nastiness to be a champion.
It seemed very overstated at the time, and since then Howard has at times been a beast. He went directly through LeBron to reach the Finals, even hanging 40 points on Cleveland to eliminate LeBron and the Cavaliers from the Eastern Conference finals. But then he and his mates posted a no-show for the opening game of a championship series.
OK, this could be, as Kobe himself said, "One game; it's no big deal." After all, there's plenty of evidence from this postseason to suggest that Orlando is the last team you'd want to judge based on any one game. The Magic looked sloppy enough to lose to Philly in the first round, but won. The Magic gave away leads in the second round to Boston and was down in that series, 3-2, but won. Orlando could have been discouraged by LeBron's game-winner in Game 2 of the East finals, but won. The Magic can look bad one night and spar with its coach publicly after the game, but then somehow forget it instantly and play like absolute champs the next night. Did Orlando simply miss shots, which can happen to a team so reliant on jump shooting? Or have the Lakers , with 7-footers Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol leading the way defensively, discovered that Howard has no go-to move around the basket, no short jumper like Yao Ming, no actual offensive game once he gets the ball other than to dunk it if allowed?
That's the subplot that matters most going into Sunday's Game 2: What can Howard do? The Lakers aren't the Cavaliers, at the mercy of haunting mismatches around the perimeter. Los Angeles, as we saw in Game 1, can indeed close out on Orlando's shooters when it plays with maximum energy and resolve on defense. LeBron, before Game 1 of the East finals, articulated the defensive philosophy that must be employed against Orlando's shooters: "In transition defense," he said, "you have to pick up a man, not necessarily your man."
The Lakers can do that, and did in Game 1. And that points to one man: the seemingly unconcerned Howard.
"It's only one game. We're going to figure out how to move the ball a lot better," he said. "I'm not concerned about getting six shots. It happens in games. They didn't single-cover. When I caught (the ball) in the post they really sat in my lap and forced me to pass it out for guys to shoot, and when I tried to turn baseline they had somebody waiting for me right there. I saw that during the game, but I wasn't patient enough to pick it apart."
It's more than a footnote that Howard added: "We're going to come back in Game 2 with a better effort. It's not about what they did. I think for us it's just our effort wasn't there."
Why a team would give less-than-maximum effort in Game 1 of the NBA Finals is impossible to understand, especially when the head coach is as impassioned as Stan Van Gundy.
But effort, as we saw with the Lakers , is almost always in professional Basketball co-signed by the star player. Orlando has only one: Howard. He was stung by criticism that he doesn't have the intensity to carry his team to a championship. And it's true, he is an engaging man who simply doesn't scowl naturally. He's what people used to call "introducible." He's lovely, really, well mannered, never disagreeable. He's a corporate sponsor's dream, always well turned out, perfectly groomed, appropriate. But this series puts him in the water with a shark in Kobe, who played Game 1 with so much "grrrrrrrrrr!" his own teammates seemed scared not to follow him.
The Lakers , when they've had trouble the last two postseasons, have struggled against big, tough, physical players who pushed them around and dominated the game three feet from the rim. The Magic have only one player who can do that, and whatever his demeanor on Sunday, it's certain he'll need to take more than six shots in Game 2 and hit more than one to make this a real series. Probably, Phil Jackson would prefer Howard not make him look like a genius just now.
Michael Wilbon is a Washington Post columnist.
