No rule says that Free Agents can't have dinner with other NBA players on other teams that may or may not be courting the free agent.
If Harden was a top 5 pick & roll guy last season with Asik mostly setting those picks, imagine how lethal it would be to have Dwight setting those picks for Harden and Lin and having him rolling to the basket instead of Asik and his butter fingers.
Lin is also top 5 PNR according to Morey. We could possibly be that lethal the entire game with any combinations of Lin, Harden, Howard and Asik on the floor.
Whilst I know that, If Mitch wants to know what Dwight is going to do early like he said, he probably needs to let Dwight talk to the teams, not just players. Else he's just waiting til July before he can choose his direction, like everyone else.
So your source heard that Dwight himself told Harden and Parsons that he would sign in Houston? Or am I taking an extra step in there that I shouldn't be?
A big part of Linsanity's success in New York was Tyson Chandler. He sets solid picks and always finishes hard at the rim. Just like the CP3-Chandler connection with the Hornets before. Defenders just tend to sag off of Asik whenever he rolled to the basket and focused on trapping Lin and Harden. It's one reason for Lin's struggles. Like Harden, he's most effective off of Pick & Rolls. Asik has terrible hands and just isn't an elite finisher like Dwight. Lin and Harden often hesitated to pass or lob the ball since it often led to Omer turning the ball over. If we are able to sign Dwight Howard, Lin and Harden would be unleashed. As much as i love Asik and his awesome defensive and rebounding skills, he was a non factor on offense. Almost a liability at times. The opponent's defense just continually cheated and sagged off of him and made it easier to trap Harden and Lin. Having an elite finisher in Dwight setting those picks on Harden on Lin, man i'm telling you, our offense would be scary good.
Yes, I totally agree. I think your the first person to really express this element of our PNR last season. Especially a problem for Lin when he got doubled after the PNR. Harden on the other hand could fight through the double team sometimes and still take it to the hole because he is so strong. A lot of the tape I've been watching on Dwight shows Kobe doing almost the exact same "no look" bounce pass that Harden does, only Dwight finishes spectacularly, taking off from just inside the free throw line. Dwight is a lot faster than Asik. I think Lin would be able to throw many of those alley oop passes to Dwight off the PNR that he did with Tyson Chandler in NY. Defenders would have to respect Dwight, giving Lin more space. And Lins shooting coach said they were going to practice right + left + two foot dunks this Summer. It would be great if Lin has more explosiveness and hops and can dunk when driving the lane off the PNR.
Exactly. It's quite dumbfounding how some fans don't even want Dwight on our team. I'm absolutely sure they will instantly all have a change of heart once they see just how potent it is to have a Dwight Howard, especially with having a Harden and Lin to play along with on our team. Pick your poison on pick & rolls. All day!
They should make a video of all the blown easy baskets Asik had this year and show it to Howard as a recruiting tool. It will be like 3 hours long though.
I can't remember exactly, but weren't the rockets planning on pairing Lin & Howard last year because of how awesome that PNR would be? Then it fell through and Howard went to LA, right?
what are you talking about lin trade? and we tried to trade for dwight during last trade deadline meaning lin was in ny either you're trolling or just dumb which one is it
Clearly you're having a brainfart. We were trying to acquire Howard at last year's trade deadline. Howard was then traded to the Lakers this summer, while Lin was signed as a free agent this past off-season.
No need to get nasty. I wasn't following then. I was just curious how the Rockets FO were planning on rebuilding, whether they were still interested in Howard last off-season and matching him with Lin and Asik. Obviously I forgot that Howard was already traded to the Lakers at the trade deadline before last off-season. Its been a long day... and my mind is mush after this much work starring at computer screens.
Howard was traded in the offseason, he sat out the last 15-20 games last year with his back injury. Houston had hoped that acquiring Dwight and looking to build around him might convince him, in retrospect, the best thing that ever happened was that he didn't acquire him, that comes in 2nd to Stern's basketball reasons. It was entirely up in the air, basically Morey decided to blow the whole thing up, he threw out those poison pills to Lin and Asik, we were basically going to be a 30 win team with some fringe young talent, if either team had matched those contracts, probably down to 20-25, then that trade in October happened. We were going to suck, but at least we weren't going to be journeyman running to another 14th pick.
