Can someone tweet him that having a severe back injury may have played in to that "decline". Ridiculous.
Did anyone see Dwight Howard at Dulles High School in Sugar Land practicing? He went there every night, not on game night. Is that true? Dwight Howard @DwightHoward @ @rasheezus I’m there everynite. Well not on game nights
Even if this offensive explosion is not sustainable (it isn't), it's great for public perception because he will command double teams and that will help everyone. So if Dwight can go off like this every 10 games or so, our supporting cast is good enough to feed off of the attention that Dwight gets. For example, there's a reason why Lin is the league leader in FG% on drives... because bigs are afraid to help off of Howard, so he just has to beat his primary defender which is Jeremy's biggest strength.
I'm sort of curious what timeline Zach Lowe is using. He was better post ASB than pre last year and he's been better pre ASB than he was post ASB last year, even month to month there's been a fairly steady upward trend post injury. Maybe he's peaked, maybe he hasn't, i don't know but Lowe is letting his bias become indisputable fact.
It doesn't matter who we play. Dwight Howard has played so well in last few weeks. He is improving and playing like Hakeem. Heck, Pistons even have big men. He even played well against good teams.
My bookie and my good friend is his agent's assistant. Dwight routinely calls and harasses him. As per him, Dwight lives in a nice high rise building in Houston. Cant tell you where, but its interesting he is playing at Dulles High...
Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond "aren't anything to sneeze at"? They're one of the best low post duos in the league.. IMO.
I believe he simply used year-to-year comparisons. And Howard was pretty crappy in the post after his injury regardless. Zach Lowe is almost always on the money in terms of judging past performances. What he doesn't do a great job at is dissecting the causes of certain performances. He many times just tell you the "what" and not the "why." Granted, most people outside the NBA teams themselves don't truly know the why. But Lowe has a tendency to be a little too sure of himself. So he looks like an ass a bit when he's wrong. Also, to be fair most of clutchfans early in the season were calling for Howard to stop posting up too. I guess the moral of the story is that the Rockets coaches know more than the rest of us.
I think it was more of a lucky night for him. He still had some horrible misses, particularly when going to his right. He misses the entire rim far too many times for an elite offensive player. You don't miss that bad when you're a proficient post player. I know I don't want him near the ball when an important game is on the line.
Dwight's post game is getting better and better and that can only be good for the Rockets. Two things he needs to still work on now: 1. Recognize the double team early and learn to play out the double team. When Dwight is not doubled, he will tear apart any other guy guarding him, doesn't matter who. Most of his big games this season have come when teams go with their center guarding him and no double teams - against Dally and Drummond for example. 2. Keep playing his game even when Harden is in and don't defer too much to Harden unless need be.
I have seem major differences in his LP game recently he is going quickly and with confidence and utilizing the dream shimmy to get his opponents timing a bit off. Working with Dream is paying off, and it seems that Dwight is taken it seriously. He is only 28, and improving - we are lucky to have him. DD
The only problem with point 2 is that it's not up to Howard how much the team's offense runs through him instead of Harden; it's probably out of the coaching staffs' hands too. Once Harden's back, you can be sure he'll be dictating where the ball goes. I've seen examples of what LOOKS LIKE (to me) Harden completely ignoring the play called by the bench and jacking up a long 3 or a contested pull up jumper on several occasions. But to be fair, that happened a lot more last season than this one. They seem to have good chemistry and I see Harden feeding Howard, but nowhere near enough as Howard deserves since he's been producing at such a high level as of late.
