Dwight Howard. Now there’s a guy who could’ve had it all, man. Cast your mind back to the early Obama years, when Kobe and Bron are duking it out for king of the league; Dwight Howard’s right behind them. The dude could jump to the moon. He could run the length of the Appalachian Trail in the time it took most athletes to do a fifty-yard dash. Andre Iguodala said he could “guard two guys at once,” while his hero, the irascible Kevin Garnett, called him a “freak of nature.” They called him Superman, too; no points for guessing whose cape he wore in the ‘08 dunk contest. He battled Kobe’s Lakers for the 2009 title, teamed up with him in 2013, and even left the NBA with a championship ring on his finger. When you talk about the greatest player in Orlando Magic history, it’s either him or young Shaq. This is one guy who had it all.
Including, unfortunately, one of the shittiest attitudes in NBA history. “Professional athlete with an enormous ego” is almost a redundant statement at this point, but Dwight adds whole new levels of arrogant weirdness to the archetype. This is the guy who famously refused to run any play that didn’t fit in his wheelhouse, i.e. catching the ball within five feet of the hoop and jamming so hard as to give the rim an existential crisis. He got Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy fired in 2012 and left the wreckage of the team that made him famous at the end of that same season. From there, he briefly joined the Lakers, but only managed to incur the wrath of Kobe; the 2013 superteam with him, Steve Nash, Ron Artest, Pau Gasol and the Mamba has to go down as one of the NBA’s most high-profile failures.
After that, Dwight bounced around the league, playing couple-three season stretches for teams that shipped him at first opportunity. Dudes on the Hawks allegedly celebrated when Dwight got shipped from there to the Hornets. The Hornets, mind. The team where good basketball goes to die. Instead of conditioning, he ate candy and played video games. It’s sad to see a guy gifted with so much squander it all, but it happens like that sometimes.
You might wonder about that ring. Well, he got it, but he was way out of his prime at that point. It was the 2020 season, where LeBron James and Anthony Davis ran Globetrotter shit over a hardworking Heat team. I’m a fan of the Heat, especially their star Jimmy Butler, but LeBron is one of my favorite players ever and one of the great basketball minds of all time. As to Dwight, he mighta been the fifth- or sixth-best player on that team. He’s since played in China, the Emirates, and Puerto Rico, a long fall for a guy who’d once been one of the league’s brightest stars. And yes, a lot of that’s age, but you can’t tell me the dude’s mindset didn’t kill him.
The symphony! Ah, the symphony. My birthday present to myself. I saw three pieces down at the DSO on Saturday, all of them pretty damn good. The program kicked off with “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” which I must confess I’d only ever heard in the context of Mickey Mouse. Turns out it’s a pretty clever piece of music! Nicely shaded, cleverly structured, and the way it’s constantly teetering out of control is a lot of fun. Conductor Jader Bignamini keeps his orchestra dynamic, too, really getting the most out of everyone. Next up was Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, with Yuja Wang as the soloist. She let it rip, y’all. Beethoven is intimidating, but she wasn’t scared for a minute, and she won herself three encores. She probably could’ve picked up a fourth, but she was gassed.
Lastly came Saint-Saens’ “Symphony No. 3,” notable because it extensively features an organ. I went in with a little trepidation here, because the organ seemed like a funny fit with the symphony to me. Y’know, the worst mix of redundant and overpowering. Yet Saint-Saens pulled it off, dammit. The instrument was used as shading more than anything else, and the piece featured some other creative arrangement touches like a four-handed piano. Some beautiful themes in there, too, and it was fun to see an electric organ (which still brought the pipes’ power, folks) at the DSO. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen any sort of electric instrument at the symphony, and it’s enough to make me wonder, could some aspiring composer incorporate electric guitar or piano tastefully? If that statement gave you utterly unappealing visions of Yngwie Malmsteen and strings, you’re not the only one. But I don’t know, music evolves all the time, and maybe somebody could pull such a project off.