Dwight's complete free fall from being an elite big man is probably the #1 reason for the Rockets' free fall. He is a net negative on the court and unfortunately the coaching staff is too closed-minded to realize we're better without him, even though our record is pretty good without him. Capela already has a better defensive and overall RPM than Dwight. The wrong center is starting and getting the most minutes. I truly believe this team is still not that bad if we had a good coaching staff that played the right guys.
Dwight's RPM is 36th among all the centers. The guy is not even top 30 center anymore, let alone a top 30 player. So yes, a complete free fall is very fitting description. People need to just stop saying we have talent 'cause we don't.
Do we really have talent? Our starting 5 ranked People keep saying we have talent, but do we? There are many ways to rank players, but here I will use PER, RPM and WS/48 as measuring sticks to see how much talent we really have. Keep in mind these are rankings in their respective position, not overall. PER (League Average 15.0) C - Dwight Howard 18.99 - 17th PF - D-Mo 11.34 - 62nd SF - Trevor Ariza 12.97 - 29th SG - James Harden 25.36 - 1st PG - Patrick Beverley 13.07 - 50th RPM (League Average around 0) C - Dwight Howard 0.37 - 36th PF - D-Mo -1.13 - 66th SF - Trevor Ariza 0.88 - 18th SG - James Harden 4.53 - 1st PG - Patrick Beverley 2.20 - 9th WS/48 (League Average around .100) C - Dwight Howard .138 - 39th PF - D-Mo .026 - 96th SF - Trevor Ariza .090 - 36th SG - James Harden .204 - 1st PG - Patrick Beverley .102 - 26th PER is a rating of a player's per-minute productivity. RPM tells you how much better a team played on offense and defense when a given player was on the floor. WS/48 is Win Shares per 48 minutes; an estimate of the number of wins contributed by the player per 48 minutes. It seems like our PF is definitely below average. Our C is slight above average, and not even close to the 'elite' level that many people expect from Dwight. Our SF and PG is above or below average depending on the stat, but I would say they are about average overall. Our SG is... well, no.1 in every category at his position. So, 1 really good SG, 1 slightly above average C, 2 average SF and PG, and 1 way below average PF. This is our starting 5. That's a talented team? I'm sorry maybe it's just me, but this is not the picture I have in mind when I think of a really talented group of players. Not to mention that our bench production ranks almost at rock bottom, and our current head coach is possibly the worst and dumbest one we've ever had in years. I don't care what the media says. This is not a championship contender material, even on paper. One could say they are underperforming a little bit; maybe they should've won 48 instead of 41 during the regular season. But if you think we could complete with the teams like GSW, SAS, OKC, CLE and LAC for the championship with our current existing players and coaching staff (especially considering Dwight's significant decline), you're badly mistaken.
Dwight at this point is an paint protector, speights was a jumper machine, need to put a different person on him
To me, it's more about using that 22 mil on other players. Capela cannot replace even a declining Dwight(not yet at least), but at this point, I'd rather spend all that money on another All-Star caliber player or two really good role players.
He's not ready but on top of that being a zero offensive threat hurts Harden and the team. That's why trading for Cousins or signing Horford should be our #2 priority (#1 obviously being Durant).
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">"He is not what he used to be down in the post" Kevin McHale on Dwight Howard</p>— SiriusXM NBA Radio (@SiriusXMNBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/SiriusXMNBA/status/723566131479490561">April 22, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
So Speights was the reason why Dwight was not getting alley-oops and the Rockets not hustling hard. Got it. Lol Speights isn't going to get playoff career highs every game. Knee-jerk nonsensical article. Let Speights shoot those long two's and threes. If he beats us, so be it. Would you really rather have Klay, Green, Barnes, etc. having his shots? Having Speights in instead of Bogut/Ezeli also removed a shot-blocker.
If morey would've spent that money different 3 years ago rockets would've came out west. I said it then and made threads about it at the time. People didn't understand and came at me, now the whole forum has shifted. They actually threw a damn parade type event outside the Toyota center (I was there) when they signed him, like Lebron came or something, that's how gassed the front office was
What about the part where Dwight was owning bogut, Ezeli and whoever? This is pretty stupid logic you are using first of all if Speight was really this amazing he wouldn't be 3rd string center on GSW, secondly Speights is a stretch player obv Dwight would have a hard time guarding him because he is bigger and slower and he has to chase Speights out of the paint, you put another guy like Beasley on him or you let him shoot all those mid-range 2s, Speights just had a lucky break last night his shots went in. Harden is having issues with Dwight because Dwight is playing like Shaq when he should be playing like De Andre Jordan. Then again Harden is so used to dominating the ball and with no offensive plan in place if Dwight plays like Jordan he never gets any shots because he sets a pick and then Harden takes a shot or dives it and kicks it out to a waiting 3 pt shooter. Couple that with Harden's bad D and Dwight gets frustrated and starts demanding touches in the post, something he's not really good at which makes Harden pass even less to him etc. This is where you need a good coach to get everyone in line and focus on the game plan, coach Spoelstra was able to do it with LBJ and Wade but JBB doesn't have the experience to be able to do it yet....and he has this weird fascination with Brewer, I'm gonna rage if he plays Brew 30 mins and the Rox lose the game.
The thing about Howard is he's always had major deficiencies. For most of his career the good stuff he gave you outweighed the bad... Hasn't been the case this year. There's just too many goaltends, mistimed jumps, bad passes, slow reactions, bad free throws, insanely bad hands, very poor finishing around the basket unless he dunks it and even his dunks aren't 100% anymore.
