HOWARD SAYS LACK OF MASK NOT ISSUE

There was a time when Dwight Howard considered not joining the Lakers in the NBA bubble. He didn’t want to leave his family after having shared so much important time the last few months. He didn’t want to leave during a time he felt it was important to speak about social issues.

So on Saturday afternoon, when he spoke to reporters for the first time since entering the NBA’S campus in Florida, Howard chastised those who he felt had lost focus and those who had turned attention to him for what he feels are trivial reasons.

“Breonna Taylor, the people who did the heinous incident against her, they’re still free,” Howard said. “They’re out there living their best life. Instead of worrying about if I have my mask on or not, that’s something we should be discussing. Why haven’t these people been brought in? Why haven’t they been charged for anything or even arrested for what they’ve done?

“Instead of the topics being about who’s not wearing a mask in the bubble, who was at the DJ party, who wasn’t, all of these things seem entertaining. But we’re not going to forget about what’s going on around our world. Those cops, one of the cops just posted a picture of himself at the beach. How could you have a conscience? You just killed somebody. And you’re out at the beach with women. You killed a woman. And you’re out at the beach with some more women having a good old time. You know, that’s not right. There’s families out there mourning, White and Black who’ve been killed by cops. Been killed through different things. The topic of discussion is who doesn’t have a mask on and people snitching. Let’s not forget why we are here.”

Taylor, a Black woman, was killed in March when police in Louisville, Ky., executed a no-knock warrant to enter her home as she slept and shot her eight times in an exchange of gunfire with her boyfriend. None of the officers has been charged.

Howard was the focus of some scrutiny last week after he said on Instagram that he had been reported to the NBA’S anonymous hotline meant to catch rule breakers for not wearing a mask. Howard rarely shows himself wearing a mask during his broadcasts. In one, he’s reminded by someone that the rules state he must wear a mask when he is inside and not at practice or in his room.

“The reaction is that we all should be wearing masks in and around the hotel lobby, and the areas that we’re being asked to wear a mask, we should wear a mask,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. “And he’s doing so now.”

On Saturday, Howard said he thought reporting him was pointless.

“Everybody’s making a big deal out of it,” Howard said. “But I feel like we’re in the safest place in Orlando. We get tested every day. So, we’re only around each other. We get tested every day. We can’t practice with masks on. I personally don’t see a risk of us getting it during the time period that we’re here.”

Tweaking first exhibitions

The first exhibition games of the NBA restart will go a little more quickly than usual.

The NBA is tweaking the rules for those initial matchups, going with 10minute quarters instead of the usual 12 minutes. The change is for several reasons — among them, not wanting to overly tax players after they went more than four months without games, and because some teams do not have their full rosters at Walt Disney World yet because of coronavirus and other issues.

The change will apply only to the first exhibition for teams; their second and third exhibition games at Disney will use standard timing.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

tania.ganguli@latimes.com