Is Dwight Howard the most overrated Center in NBA history?

Wow. Yao isn't even in the same ballpark as those guys.

 

You sure? Fronting was his problem.
But like Mark Eton Yao's size gave everyone big problems.....

 

Seriously? Yao in his prime as as unguard-able one v one as they come. That hook, that jumper, that lower body trunk...

Yao is in their ball park, trust me. It's Howard that's way off

 

LOL, no he's not. Look at the #'s, Ewing/Robinson put up much better offensive #'s against MUCH better competition. Not to mention that they were better rebounders and defenders.

 

numbers don't tell the whole story. Yao was constantly bugged by injuries, not to mention constant double-teams, fronts, and horrible officiating. As a result, he never lived up to his potential, but at the peak of his prime, there wasn't a center not named Shaq that could contend with him.

I'm probably biased, though. Anyway the point is not whether Yao was better than his priors, but that he's light years above Howard.

 

Many have conjectured that Yao would have been a more effective player in the 90s. The pride of centers around the league will keep Yao playing 1-on-1s and back to the basket defense. Yao only became less effective in late 2000s cos the center game has completely metamorphosed into PF game.

More center competition would have been the best thing for Yao to develop and be utilized as a player. Remember, he's a tough guy too (except foot bone).

 

He was far and away the best player on the team that had the best record, that's pretty much textbook MVP.

 

Dwight was a leagues better rebounder and defender than Yao. On offense the most noticable difference is Yao actually worked to improve his offense, Dwight seems to have started caring more about his legacy than his game (and now he has that nerve issue to contend with) so his offensive game just stalled about 2 years ago, it's like T-mac of centers, tons of talent, no work ethic, injury questions early in the career.

 

This is my point, though. That regular season acclaim is what creates the whole premise that Robinson was overrated to begin with. It's an important half of the equation. It sets him up to be demolished by all the better centers in the playoffs, which happened like clockwork every season until the asterisk lockout year when he was over the hill and it was already Tim Duncan's team. You're not supposed to hop in your time machine in this thread and try to defend the reasoning of MVP voters at the time. Seemed like a good pick at the time. After that series against the Rockets? Not so much. With the benefit of hindsight, you're supposed to go "Yeah, I guess that guy WAS pretty overrated, if he always sucked ass when it mattered most."

We get it, there is supposed to be this separation between what happens in the regular season and what happens in the playoffs when it comes to MVP awards and sportswriters wetting themselves with platitudes in praise of its winner. But to get unceremoniously rolled by the guy who should have won the award instead. That screams overrated, right there. Quick history lesson: Hakeem Olajuwon was absolutely in the mix for his second straight MVP that season, but the Rockets' poorer record and an overriding sense of "fairness" to Robinson were used as excuses by pundits to deny a player who was already highly scrutinized due to his ethnicity and this perception that he could not get out from under Michael Jordan's shadow. Even in 1995, that was the case.

David Robinson is what you would call a Nice Guy, and so has escaped scrutiny himself for most of his career, but we need to talk about how this guy kind of sucked. What happened in the early 90s, when the Spurs were "clearly" better than Houston and yet couldn't get any traction when it mattered most in the playoffs?

If a player--David Robinson--puts up numbers against bad teams in the regular season as a first scoring option, and then wets himself and can't get out of the first round of the playoffs 3 of the best 4 years of his career, what does that make him but the frontcourt version of Tracy McGrady? Yeah. I went there. That happened.

 

Yao Ming is not better than Dwight Howard because he's always injured. He was better when healthy, but the reality is health issues made Yao Ming worse than DH, who was always present both in regular season and in the playoffs. Putting there one-on-one statistics out there doesn't really mean anything, Yao Ming is like several years older than Howard and when the two played against each other Ming was already in his prime while DH is in his early 20's. By the time DH reached his prime Ming was already injured every year and had to retire.

People keep calling him overrated, but who overrates him? You don't see anyone saying he'd dominate guys like Hakeem, in fact it's the opposite, everyone saying DH would get eaten alive by the old Cs like Mourning and Robinson, never mind the top of the line guys like Shaq and Hakeem.

It's like saying Joe Johnson is overrated or Rashard lewis is overrated when no one is saying they're the best ever. What's undeniable though is Howard is the best center now, there's no center better than him today.

 

Howard sucks!

come on Howard, try to have a heart like Shaq first.

Gasol, sucking ball 2pts? and getting paid 19,000,000?

this fakers are killing old man kobe bryant, he's playing 40+ minutes again!!!!!

 

Yao never effected winning much. The 22 win streak was mostly without him. Our 7 game run against the Lakers was without him. He was a very mediocre rebounder, didn't really intimidate on defense, and was too easy negate on offense. Yes he was unstoppable when we got him the ball deep in the paint, but it would take 15 seconds of the shot clock to do so, and we would turn the ball over on a quarter of our attempts.

 

Sup dude

 

In a room with no one but only Sarah Jessica parker, she would be the most beautiful one there.

Maybe.

 

The greatest centers to ever lived was in this order:

Hakeem
Yao Ming
.
.
.
.
the rest.

 

I don't know...how do you perceive Howard's rated?? Has anyone implied he's on his way to joining the Wilt-Kareem-Dream-Russell-Shaq tier? Then yes. They're wrong. I don't see any problem with saying he might end up as good as Robinson, or Ewing, or even Moses, though...that 6-10 range in all time centers seems like his destiny to me.

 

After reading this thread looks like Dwight Howard is actually underrated.

 

Dwight is not healthy, he does not have the speed/power combination right now that made him a top 3 player in past. Which brings me to the point that if Dwight loses even 15% of the athleticism he once had, he becomes really exposed as he has not developed a real post game and still cant shoot free throws or pass very well. He is not going to age well.

 

Rich mans Tyson chandler.