After biding their time, Magic and Howard are busting out

Dwight Howard is on pace to become the first player to lead the league in blocks and rebounds twice.

If patience, as the famous philosopher Archie Bunker once said, is a virgin, then Dwight Howard is learning the value of being chaste. Because he has been toiling in and terrorizing the paint on NBA courts for nearly six seasons, we tend to forget sometimes that Howard is only 24 years old.

Then the 6-foot-11 center of the Orlando Magic has a night like Wednesday in Houston, where he rises like Godzilla out of Tokyo Bay, with 30 points and 16 rebounds on 11-for-11 shooting. Then, the value of forbearance is foremost.

"I'm just staying patient and taking what the defense give me now," Howard said. "I worked extremely hard in the offseason to get better and I work every day in practice to get better.

"I told a lot of our guys at the beginning of the season that it might not show right away, but it would start showing eventually. Now I think everything is getting better for me offensively and defensively."

There's no arguing with the results. With his perfect shooting night in Houston, Howard became the first NBA player to combine 30 or more points and 15 or more rebounds without missing a field goal (minimum 10 attempts) since Wilt Chamberlain did it on March 11, 1969.

Howard currently leads the NBA in both rebounding (13.5 a game) and blocked shots (2.8) and is on pace to become the first player ever to lead both categories in the same season more than once. (The league started keeping blocks as an official stat in 1973-74.)

The truth is, Howard is doing more while expending less energy. In short, he's developed patience.

"I'm a little bit older now than when I first got into the league," he said. "I understand now that you don't have to go 100 miles per hour and do everything at a fast pace. Just let it happen. I'm starting to read the defense, learning when to move and pass the ball out."

Since Jan. 15, Howard has strung together 19 consecutive double-double performances, which broke the old franchise record held by Shaquille O'Neal (1993). During that stretch, he has averaged 22.3 points, 14.3 rebounds and 3.47 blocks per game.

"I don't think this is just a stretch," said Magic coach Stan Van Gundy. "First of all, he's matured to where his effort and energy are consistently high. He's so far ahead of everybody else in the league in terms of rebounding.

"He's changed the way he plays now. He's just taking what they give him. If you take away his move across the middle, he'll counter. If you take that away, he'll come back again. He's not going to force through double teams.

"It takes time. Big guys take longer than other people. Dwight has actually come quicker than most big guys."

Since Howard has puffed up his game, the questions surrounding the Magic have begun to fade. Over the past five weeks, they've scored wins over Cleveland, Boston (twice) and Atlanta, the other elites of the Eastern Conference.

While the Cavaliers and Celtics both felt the need to make changes to their rosters ahead of the trade deadline, the Magic, who essentially swapped Hedo Turkoglu, Rafer Alson and Courtney Lee for Vince Carter, Jason Williams and Ryan Anderson over the summer, stood pat.

"I didn't feel that we needed to make any changes," Howard said. "We did our changing at the beginning of the season. Now the guys in this locker room are ready to win a championship.

"It's the same thing with me about being patient with my game. We had to do that as a team. We understood that we had a lot of new pieces and it was going to take time for guys to get accustomed to the system. Now we're playing better because, instead of us pointing a finger and complaining, we understood at the start that we had to put in the work at practice and would eventually pay off in the games."

Howard is also getting a payoff from his work with Hall of Famer and assistant coach Patrick Ewing.

"He stays on my back a lot," Howard said. "The thing that Pat has mostly helped me with is maturity. He's been through everything I've gone through as a player. Me and him sit in the gym and talk and then we go to work on my post game."

Howard has lately been showing off added prowess with left-handed offensive moves.

"What people don't know is that I'm actually left-handed," Howard said. "My left hand has always been better than my right. I used to shoot with my left hand, but I broke my wrist in high school and had to switch over to my right hand. So now they're both equal."

Said Van Gundy: "What he's doing is incredible. Yet people want more and now they're getting more."