Tonight at 8:00 p.m. in Houston, the Rockets (1-0) will host the Dallas Mavericks (1-0) at the Toyota Center, where Dwight Howard will look to make Mavs owner Mark Cuban eat his words regarding his choice of Houston in free agency. Live stream the game here; Rockets fans can hear the game on Sports Radio 610, while Mavericks fans can do the same on Sports Radio 1310 The Ticket.
Earlier this week Cuban bashed Howard's decision to join James Harden in Houston. "Obviously, he made a mistake in judgment," Cuban said Thursday. "Do I blame him? No, that's what young kids do. They make mistakes in judgment."
Cuban went on to say Howard was foolish to choose playing with Harden over taking stock of the organization as a whole. "You choose teams. You don't choose players," Cuban said. "If he made a choice off of an individual player, yeah, he made a mistake. You choose teams. You choose organizations."
Later in his discussion of Howard's choice, Cuban said his words applied to all free agents. "Put aside Dwight. Any young superstar looking to make a move, if you're that good, then the right organization gets all the right pieces around you. So it's not about you'd rather play with this guy. If you're that good and you have [salary-cap] flexibility, the right organization will put the right pieces around you and get you there."
Howard looked like he made a sound choice in the Rockets' opener though, scoring 17 points and matching a career-high with 26 rebounds.
"I didn't want to put any pressure on myself," Howard said. "I just wanted to go out there and play and have fun and get back to being who I am as a player. I think when you focus too much on that and what everybody else is saying that's when you don't play like you want to play."
In a less-heralded debut, Monta Ellis scored 32 points in Dallas' opening win. "When they were playing up on him in the pick-and-roll he just beat both guys around and got to the basket," Dirk Nowitzki said of Ellis. "If they collapsed on him, he found the right guy and found the shooters. I mean, that's what he has to do for us all season long and that's being aggressive."
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