Daryl Denying Dwight, Analytics, and the Hard-Headedness of Dwight Regarding PnR vs Post-Up

I wasn't really thrilled by the Howard signing at that time. I thought we needed a star PF to play with Asik than a star C to play with whatever PF we had. But I also knew that a beggar is not a chooser. So I'd give Dwight the benefit of the doubt. I tried to and hoped to see a good Dwight.

Now my fear has come true. Dwight is not what we hoped. It turned out that his Lakers stint was not just a fluke but a reflection on what he really was. I am not talking about his basketball skills. I am talking about his mentality.

 

It's very disappointing for him to put being a post-up center above winning. Of course he spins it as that is how you win and Morey knows nothing about basketball. Yeah Dwight, you suck at post-ups, why is that???

I mean are you just being comical? His coming to Houston wasn't some act of altruism. He did it because he thought it was the best place to call home. And he was welcomed here with open arms and the past was forgotten. He truly had a new start. He Hakeem working with him, he had McHale - he was a centerpiece.

What did he do with that? Instead of maturing and realizing his limits at posting up...he insisted on playing only a certain way to be happy. The guy is crazy. What's wrong with PnR big man basketball? He would score more if he learned to set better picks.

He sucks at picks not because he can't set them, but because he feels they are beneath him. Because it doesn't make him look like Shaq or Hakeem. He wants to dominate and be the man first, win second.

He calls himself a champion to make himself feel better. But he's not a champion. Not because he doesn't have any ring, but because he doesn't even play like a champion. A champion plays to win - they do whatever it takes. They eat poop-sandwhiches if it will help them win. At the very least, if they want to be good at something, they work on it and figure it out. If he wanted to be a champion, he'd shoot his free-throws underhand. He'd do something. He'd reinvent himself.

You know what a champion is? Hungry and Humble. That's Hakeem.

Howard is neither hungry nor humble. He's a big baby.

If he opts out, this team is fine. If he opts in, we can trade him for some assets and improve this team for Harden.

 

lol omg that's hysterical

 

I remember him complaining about touches in Orlando too and SVG said he needed to focus on defense and rebounding and not worry about touches.

Damn why didn't anyone listen to SVG back then.

 

Lol. So thats why hes leaving.

 

Let's look at the bright side to the failed experiment with Dwight:

Morey gave him a player option that could be exercised right when a massive bump in the salary cap came along. Morey could have held Dwight's feet to the fire and not given him that, and we'd have been looking at another year of the same exact thing as last year.

Sure, Fegan was likely the one who demanded the option year. Regardless, DM went against team rules (Dragic, anyone?) and allowed the player option.
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The ol' backdoor play.
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Dwight's biggest question mark.....

What kind of player would he have become if he simply averaged a career 71% from the line?

 

Is this accounting for the time he get foul and got to the line? Are they adding his FT %?

 

Child, please. Sports is a results oriented business just like any other business. Organizations will promise all kinds of things to players in order to get them to sign with them, but if the player doesn't perform up to expectations the organization isn't going to continue with the nonsense.

Dwight was promised to be a focal point of the Rockets, he was promised he would get touches. All of these things actually came true, Dwight gets more touches than any other big man in the game so no promises were broken there.

Dwight is just mad because he's not able to produce the way elite bigs before him were able to. So, rather than try and adapt his game and be a strong presence for his team, he just checks out. At least Kyle Lowry has the respect to leave the court when he checks out, Dwight just stays in the game and pretends to be there.

 

Wonder how we would have looked with Asik, Millsap and another player we could have signed with the left over money.

 

yes, free throws are included in the calculation of ppp

PPP (points per possession) = Pts / (FGA – OREB + TO (0.44 × FTA ))

 

yes, free throws are included in the calculation of ppp

PPP (points per possession) = Pts / (FGA – OREB + TO + (0.44 × FTA ))

 

Harden iso is the rockets style of play

 

The Rockets have talent issues.

 

To me it's simple. No reason to overanalyze. Dwight is just making up excuses for his poor play on both sides of the ball. He's not fooling the Rockets and I'd never thought that after three seasons i'd be hoping that Howard left the organization, but here we are. Time to move on and reload.

 

If the philosophy is do only what you are good at then we need to acquire a point guard and take point responsibilities away from James. Because James is an excellent scorer. But he sucks as a playmaker, turning the ball over a record number of times and consistently overlooking more efficient scoring opportunities in favor of dishing the ball to lower efficiency scorers.

If it's good for the goose...........

Here's the problem with this analysis. We signed Dwight to be one of our franchise cornerstones in 2013. We wined and dined him. We told him he was going to be the next great big man in our franchise history. We told him we were going to give him the basketball a lot. And we gave him a 4-year contract to do all those things for 4 years.

He balls for us that first year. (By the way, that was the best team of the Dwight Era. ) We had James, Dwight, Chandler, and Jeremy. James didn't want Lin back. He wanted Dwight traded. And he didn't care that Parsons walked. Does that tell you anything?

Then in July of 2014 after losing Parsons in free agency James declares publicly that "we'll be fine, me and Dwight are the cornerstones, everybody else is role players."

A few months later Dwight gets dinged, misses a stretch of games, and when he comes back he is being phased out. This is 1 1/2 years after we gave him a 4-year deal and told him he was our guy and literally 6 months after James reiterated that point.

Now everybody wants to focus on how poor he is at posting up. Guys he was piss poor at posting up when we signed him to a 4 year deal and told him he was our guy. Oh he's gotten worse has he? So has James turnovers. Goose/gander. We signed him and told him he was our guy. Then a year and a half later we're phasing him out of the offense and turning him into a role player while James is turning the ball over at a rate to match his booty calls.

Dwight turned himself into a role player you say? Ummmm, no. He's the same player he was when we signed him with more wear and tear and some diminished capacity. All players diminish with age. Like we didn't know he was going to digress with age? Gimme a break. We've got more data than we can quantify indication player regression with age. We knew he was going to regress when we committed to him for 4 years.

Be honest and look at what's happened to our team over the last 3 seasons. We've gone from an offensive rating of 111 the first year Dwight was here with Chandler and Lin down to 108 while playing faster and faster with other "role players" while the defense went to hell and we dumped everybody that takes possessions away from James. We haven't gotten better. We've gotten worse the last 2 seasons with more limited offensive capacity as we replaced playmakers who willingly gave Dwight and James the basketball, with guys that can't do anything offensively but stand around and try to make a 3-ball that they just aren't good enough to take in volume.

Dwight did not do any of that. He wasn't responsible for any of those decisions. Nor was he responsible for one-dimensional playmaking and being totally ignored when he sealed his defender under the rim.

We are responsible for partially diminishing Dwight's earnings capacity with how we've dealt with him after telling him he was our guy for the next 4 seasons. We are responsible for not bringing in efficient playmakers who could and would feed Dwight efficient looks. Not post-ups, mind you. But efficient looks where he could finish. See you've made this all about post-ups. But it's not about post-ups.

We signed Dwight knowing he didn't like running pick-and-roll. The agreement when we signed him was that he be willing to run a few more PnR's and we would also find other ways to get him the ball in scoring position. What you aren't acknowledging here is that Dwight HAS modified his game. Dwight has not demanded post touches. He's taken a lot fewer of them. And he's run more PnR's than he likes to.

But we didn't reciprocate and help him get his scoring numbers by feeding him the ball. We took away his playmakers and didn't replace them. And we dummied down our offense to James right, James left, James up the middle. With James turning the ball over even more frequently and throwing the ball out to inferior offensive options than Dwight catching the ball within 2 feet of the rim.

Now we're down to Dwight's opton year and his earnings power is severely hindered while he faces a continual negative media campaign screaming for him to not opt in because we don't want him.

Guess what? This is businesses folks. Right now Dwight is probably going to opt in to get his money. Instead of not opting in to get more money he's probably going to opt in to get his money and sign next year for even more money.

Bottom line: You can't sign a guy to a 4-year max deal, tell him he's your guy for the next 4 years and then bail on him a year and a half into his contract and expect it not to be a problem for your franchise. We signed Dwight. We knew what he was when we signed him and made him the man. Gotta live with that.

Barring an unforseen change Dwight is most likely going to opt in on June 30th. And we're going to have to live with yet another disastrous repercussion of the decisions this franchise has made in the James/Dwight era.

 

We get rid of multi-dimensional talented players in favor of limited players that will give James the ball and get out of his way.

 

The problem is Morey didn't explain to Howard why he shouldn't get more involved in.

 

Bottom Line:

You can't sign a 4-year max deal and then sulk when the team does what is best for winning and not your ego. Dwight isn't a winner, he's not tough. He's a complainer and whimp.

Dwight's gotta live with that, as does the next team that signs him.