Dwight Howard looked up from his seated position on the bench during pregame shootarounds. “Somehow, I knew you’d be making a visit,” he said.
Clint Capela smirked. “Everybody here in Houston hates your guts. Just thought I would let you know.”
“Yeah, I think you already told me,” Dwight said, clearly tired of Clint’s harassment. “Remember all those phone calls?”
“I was going to make another one today, but then I remembered that I could talk to you face to face,” Clint replied. “Did you know that, whenever we lose a game, James makes this big locker-room speech where he says ‘at least we don’t have that loser and literally stupid human being Dwight Howard on our team anymore’? And then everybody cheers and claps because we all remember how bad you suck.”
Dwight rolled his eyes. “I don’t know if you actually think I believe these strange lies you keep making up.”
“I’m actually a better player than you,” Clint said, not responding to his ex-teammate’s statement. “No lie. The stats agree with me. Plus I’m young and have upside while you’re clearly on the downswing of your career. And you’re a drama-queen whereas I am the perfect example of a model teammate.”
“Sure,” answered Dwight. “Why don’t you go back over to your side of the court?”
Clint glanced over where his own teammates were lazily shooting jumpers, then directed his eyes back at his nemesis. “I’m gonna talk trash all game. Maybe I’ll even make you cry through a combination of my cutting insults and superior basketball abilities,” he said. “I just finished talking with Millsap and Bazemore and they said they hate you too, so, you know, that’s funny too. Everybody in Atlanta is already tired of your antics and how you can only do dunks while I have a multitude of scoring skills in my repertoire.”
Deciding that his torment of Dwight was finished, Clint exaggeratedly waved good-bye. “See you on the court, little bitch,” he said sweetly.
Dwight simply shook his head in response, and Clint knew he had won this particular battle of the psychological war he was waging.