It’s reunion night at Verizon Center, where Josh Howard will take on his former team, the Dallas Mavericks, for the first time, while Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson return to Washington for the first time as a part of the Mavericks. Butler, who is recovering from a ruptured right patellar tendon, isn’t playing. Haywood and Stevenson are both in reserve roles, but that doesn’t bother DeShawn, for one, since he started 49 games this year before the recent return of Rodrigue Beaubois. Stevenson is also content that Dallas didn’t make any hasty trades at the deadline.
“It’s kind of hard to move someone with 41 wins and 16 losses,” he said. “The people they have here, everybody talks to each other, we’ve got great players, a hall of famer. It’s just a great vibe here so it’s easy to come out and play hard.”
Yes, indeed, nice to be on a good team, which is sort of the opposite situation for Howard.
“He’ll be emotional,” said Wizards head coach Flip Saunders. “It always is the first time. We talked a little bit before, and he said, ‘Hey, I just want to get a win. I’m just to do what I can, I know that I gotta defend Peja [Stojakovic] tonight.’ I’m sure he’ll be as aggressive tonight as he was against Miami and try to do a lot of the same things.”
As they were last night, the Wizards will be without Andray Blatche (hip) and Al Thornton (sprained ankle).
