Dwight Howard Makes His Debut For Houston & Erroneous Reports Say He Was Ejected

There was a lot of excitement last night despite it only being preseason. We finally got to see Derrick Rose back on the court, but Dwight Howard also made his debut with the Rockets. The results are pretty universal that Dwight — combined with James Harden and Jeremy Lin — was impressive, looking like more like the Dwight of old.

Howard dropped 19 & 9 on 6-for-11 shooting from the field and an impressive 7-for-11 from the charity stripe in a little over 27 minutes of action. Lin and Harden found him near the restricted area with a series of adroit pocket passes , and — aside from a couple Anthony Davis blocks — Dwight was able to convert at a pretty high rate.

The Rockets starters led them to a 33-24 first quarter advantage with Harden nailing two-straight 3-pointers while starting 4-for-5 from the field, but the shooting of Anthony Morrow helped lead the Pelicans back for the victory. Any enthusiasm from Pellies fans was tempered by Tyreke Evans‘ left ankle sprain (X-Rays were negative), but Anthony Davis looked fantastic on both sides of the court finishing with 21 points on 9-for-16 shooting, 2 steals and 2 blocks — including the aforementioned swat of Dwight.

Still, Dwight performed admirably in his first action since signing with Houston.

One bizarre story that a lot of outlets picked up was that Dwight was ejected following a second technical foul. He had been jawing with the refs quite a bit for a preseason game, but, um, he was not ejected from his first preseason game with Houston.

Howard was only assessed one individual technical, after getting whistled for a defensive 3-second violation, which was Houston’s second. Hence, a team technical. Here’s the box score:

Houston Chronicle scribe Jonathan Feigen explained the mixup to confused people on Twitter.

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That didn’t stop a lot of outlets from reporting the ejection anyway, as @Ballislife humorously shows us:

Even after Howard’s impressive showing — as is often the case with a polarizing figure like Dwight — basketball writers degraded his offense (understandable), while also pointing out that he’s still an improvement over the guy the Lakers picked up to replace him: Chris Kaman.

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