Houston had itself a hell of a storm on Monday night, with lightning, torrential rain and flash flooding all over the area. They also had themselves a hell of a basketball game, and no one at the Toyota Center was leaving the Rockets’ Game 4 win to extend the Western Conference Finals early to beat the weather. Late in the game, the arena put a message on their video boards advising fans in attendance to stay put after the game until road conditions improved:
https://instagram.com/p/3Id28kRV-w/
Plenty of fans left anyway, but a few hundred heeded the warning and waited until the all-clear was given… at 5:30 in the friggin’ morning. Woof. The Rockets did the best they could to keep fans happy, feeding them coffee, bagels and snacks, and — hey, is that Dwight Howard?
Here's @DwightHoward coming out to greet #Rockets fans that have been stranded at Toyota Center: pic.twitter.com/RCJkIVxJHt
— Adam Clanton (@adamclanton) May 26, 2015
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Dwight lives farther away from Houston than his Rockets teammates, so while they all braved the flooding, he played it safe. He also spent some time on the arena floor hanging out with fans, which is a very Dwight thing to do (but in the best way possible). Another very Dwight thing to do is post double-doubles, which he did for the 13th time in these playoffs (out of 16 games) and seventh in a row. He wasn’t a huge part of the insane scoring barrage the Rockets used to down the Warriors, but he was fighting as hard as any of them.
After the game, Howard told reporters “we don’t want to go home.” Sure, he was probably talking about the sweep his team avoided, but he might have just been super excited for the arena slumber party he was in for. Dwight was last seen at Toyota Center around 2:15 a.m., though no one saw him leave.
Maybe he’s still there – can someone check on Dwight?
(Via NBC, ESPN and Adam Clanton)
