More like revisionist history... The Rockets last season had the 3rd best regular season record and a top-3 finish in the playoffs. Like others said, those first two games against GSW in the WCF could have gone either way. If they did, it's a different series and perhaps a different champion. Face it, Blurr#7 got you...
He's not a net negative imo, and I'm not speaking empirically for this season. I mean that in the right situation, his contributions can outweigh his drawbacks. It's just that his drawbacks are easily exploited by many teams and are frustrating to watch.
I'm all for keeping Dwight as a 3rd option if he's fine with reducing his contract. Dude really needs to be humbled and accept that he's second fiddle to Harden.
Forget even second fiddle. He needs to accept the role of being Andrew Bogut, Tyson Chandler, or DeAndre Jordan. Focus on defense and rebounding and do not post up... EVER. On offense, he should be the 5th option (i.e. LAST) on the court.
do you even watch what his role turned into dating back to his return last season. Judging by this post it doesn't seem likely
Capela is potentially all the good things about Dwight (rebounding, shot blocking, shot altering) minus mostly all the bad (never posts up so not as many turnovers, dumb fouls, traveling, never gets called for goal tending). The both are trash from the foul line but at least Capela has a good looking shot that can be improved.
Uh, yes we were. We might have been sloppy, lucky, played ugly ball... but we were definitely a contender. No question. We were 5 points away from being 2-0 vs. GSW, including one excellent trap by Splash Bros vs. Harden from winning that one outright. We weren't likely to win it all - but we were contenders. We beat Cleveland in the regular season handily. We can be down on the Rockets this season all we want but last season we did capture lightning in a bottle.
This year Howard gets 8.9 Post touches per game. Touches. Of those touches he attempts 5.2 FGs a game. Of those attempts he makes 3.4 FGs. His FG% on Post touches FGs is 66.2% To put that into a 3pt shooter perspective for you, 66.2% FGs is equivalent to shooting 44.13% 3PT%. Steve Curry shoots 46.1% 3PT%. So telling Dwight to never shoot from post touches ever, based on his volume & attempts of post touches this year, is about as asinine as telling Curry to never shoot a 3.
Stop dumping it into him. Get him moving in the two man game. James was making a point in the last game to set him up for money dunks. Thats how Dwight is fully utilized. Give a damn what the stats say, Im going Kenny Smith and saying he passes the eye test for me defensively. He has been lapsing lately on the perimeter, but thats just because the wings on this team are laughably bad on the defensive perimeter and routinely sets up the bigs for either fouls or easy baskets by opponents. Dwight backs off defensively to offset the stupidity IMO. He's almost gone, stop crying.
post UP attempts, 3.07 a game. He makes 46.3% of them. That's like shooting 31% from the 3. It's not great. Which is why on average he only attempts post ups 3 times a game. But it's also not "holy crap terrible." Especially when he can usually get the other team's bigs in foul trouble. The majority of his attempts from post touches anyways this year are from catch & dunks or alley oop dunks. He already has adjusted his game. And he has already said he is comitted to allow James Harden to be the main dog #1. This was old news LAST YEAR. Give him about 12 attempts a game, and let the majority of them be of the catch & dunk variety. That's what they already do. Saying he should be 5th option on the court is just stupid. Dwight is still very athletic and active.
I don't think your stats are accurate. I think that 66.2% FG rating includes pick n roll catches, alley-oops, put-backs, etc.
Post "Touches" So you're right. See my post above. Dwight posts up way less this year. POST UP STATS http://stats.nba.com/playtype/#!/po...&PT=player&CF=TeamNameAbbreviation*E*&sort=FG POST TOUCHES ATTEMPT (all attempts within 12 ft of basket) http://stats.nba.com/tracking/#!/pl...n=C&sort=POST_TOUCH_FG_PCT&dir=1&CF=MIN*GE*20
hard to believe stuff like this even still needs to be repeated at this point. So many want to criticize yet fail to understand what is actually happening
Paint Touches Attempts.... attempts when the ball is received within the paint http://stats.nba.com/tracking/#!/pl...=C&sort=PAINT_TOUCH_FG_PCT&dir=1&CF=MIN*GE*20 Howard is 71.2% FG% here. He attempts 4.5 of these a game. This is money for Howard. He's better than Anthony Davis here. The top 3 with starter-esque minutes here are #1 Deandre Jordan #2 Nerlens Noel #3 Dwight Howard. He is still a force with catches in the paint. Get out of the way or get dunked into oblivion.
One thing I've observed is that Dwight can easily score on PF's pretending to be Centers in the post. Dude can't really dominate true Centers that match up to him physically. Drummond, Valanciunas, Jordan, Bogut tend to punk him.
Yeah, I noticed right after you posted it. Anyhow, he should post up even less, lol. I actually like Dwight a lot, but he kind of sucks in the post. In addition to FG%, you have to account for turnovers and missed free throws. The more complete assessment is post points per possession scaled, which puts Dwight at the 45.4 percentile among all 194 NBA players who have at least 10 post ups this season. That's not good. For comparison, Vucevic is in the 70.9%, Aldridge 86.7%, Randolph 59.2%, Marc Gasol 63.3%, Dirk 92.3%, Greg Monroe 55.1%, Big Al 58.7%, Brook Lopez 76%, Andre Drummond 29.6%, Roy Hibbert 15.3%, Robin Lopez 75.5%, Duncan 56.2%, Blake Griffin 56.1%, Love 86.2%, Carmelo 62.8%, Pau 41.8% He has the 14th highest post-up frequency (at 30.2%) in the NBA among that set of 194 players. When it comes to efficiency, he's on the lower end, and when it comes to post-up usage he's on the higher end. So this is just bad basketball when Dwight posts up. He's a little more efficient than Pau Gasol at it, but Pau only posts up on 20.6% of his offensive plays.
3rd best regular season in Rockets history. One of the few teams to come back from 3-1. And people still doubting we were contenders lol.
