This has been a funny thread; love the bashing of Howard. Is this the board for Houston Rocket fans? Boy, Harden must feel lucky to have Howard on his team, considering the horrible shooting game he had. If Harden had provided a little offense we would have easily won. I for one have enjoyed Howard this year and we are lucky to have him. He has made a lot of progress this year with only one year under his belt training under the master himself. If you've done anything one way for almost ten years, and try to learn a different way to do it, it is going to take awhile. At first, you will actually look clumsy and rather stupid, just as most of you have noticed and voiced. This usually means the student is thinking too much instead of just reacting. It takes a long time for it to become and look natural. By the way; all this damn talk by Shaq about Howard not being this and that. I recall Shaq as he really was. He was not too skilled himself. He just happened to be much bigger than everyone else. The refs let him get away with a lot going over and through people for rebounds and slams. There was no one with enough size to do anything about it.... Except Dream....
Dwight is not a quick as Hakeem. And he is not as big as Shaq and Yao. So he's just not build to a a dominant low post force. Maybe Dwight isn't dumb. But I do think he is VERY dumb in not willing to embrace the PnR and insisting on the post up game. The PnR is one thing that he is physically built for. And we have at least two guards on our team who can feast on PnR with him.
does he need to look at the ball when dribbling? in those images, he's looking downward until he's about to shoot.
Hakeem isn't teaching DH how to be dream 2.0 DH has vastly improved his post game I just wish they'd feed it to him deeper in the post.
Harden gets his share of criticism, mainly for his defense or lack thereof. Rant coming Spoiler And not to nitpick on you, but of course it goes back to the offense. LOL OFFENSE! OFFENSE! AND MORE OFFENSE! How about some defense from the team? Nope, all goes back to the offense! We'll just outscore the team! Screw defense! Who needs defense? Hey, let's go get Carmelo! We need more offense! LOL Hey, if we just scored a little more, we'd be alright! How 'bout some damn defense? Or we don't need defense? Folks want McHale gone, the perfect replacement is Mike D'Antoni! OFFENSE! OFFENSE! AND MORE OFFENSE! RUN AND GUN! THREES, FREES, & LAYUPS! End rant
There is one move Dream had that Dwight doesn't and that's the fade away jumper. Early in the season Dwight would make a move and then stop which let the defender catch up. Dwight is at his best when he is moving. He's not that much of a stop and shoot guy. I think Dream is not necessarily teaching him his moves but teaching Dwight how to be better with Dwight's moves. Dream tells him to make a move (in one of the videos posted a while back) quickly and have a counter. I do agree that I expected for Dwight to have progressed more at this point in the season. He just threw up some shots early in game 1.
Again, this is a very simple concept to grasp. Spin on your pivot foot past defender...It's not about perfecting the move or looking flawless. It's the starting point, as taught by Dream. He shouldnt need more than a season to get the footwork down. And the reason Im focusing on Howard is, he's the greatest advantage we have, not Harden. At least against this team. He should be having a monster game himself, like LMA. This is the plan going forward, from what I've been reading, but it should have been the plan in Game one. Harden didn't need to make more of his shots, he needed to stop jacking up so many quick threes.
Dwight lacks the fine motor coordination that Yao has, that white guys like Nash have. Guys like Yao and Nash lack the explosiveness, the fast twitch muscles and ups of black guys like Dwight.
Wow. I think you're at the wrong forum with that BS. Look around the league buddy, after you're done you can't deny that "the mold" BS holds not true. Go back to the cave you crawled out of.
He ends up looking down because he's leaning forward, leading with his head, when he should have his lower body under him instead, which would give him better balance. If he did the move correctly, he'd lead with his lower body.
I know. My point is that for all the skills he acquired, without his never duplicated agility, balance and touch all those skills would not have been nearly as effective. Not everybody gets the same results out of the same amount of hard work in the gym. Natural talent is the biggest factor.
Eh, not gonna give a 101-level tutorial on the group distributions. Just remember my post next time Dwight can't hit frees at a high rate or shows off his clunky post moves. He's fast-twitch explosive, but has relatively poor fine motor coordination.
I think his muscle fiber distribution is fine. Maybe his neural wires get crossed because he went from being a leftie to a righty? I don't know...I don't want to believe he's just dumb...
I think he realizes that he cant rely purely on athleticism. pnr with him is mostly athleticism since he isnt going to be setting up for pop jump shots.
Yep, in that picture the first step should be with his left leg dropping in the paint towards the goal. That seals the defender behind him and it moves him towards the basket. Moving your right foot first is not the correct drop step move. Moving your right foot first means he is just turning in the same spot. That allows the defender to move down the paint and cut him off. Takes longer to get to the basket. He just needs to work on his basic footwork. He should be using his lower body to get (and hold) post postion and not waste time and energy doing all that arm pushing and fighting. One shoulder fake anda quick drop step (with proper footwork) is all he needs with his size and speed.
Three factors: 1. Dwight just isn't a great offensive player, his movements are really mechanical and I agree with other posters stating that his type of play doesn't fit with Dream´s type of play. That said, the NBA won´t let him play as aggressive as Shaq so....he should embrace the pick n´roll more often. To be fair, he has his moments of dominance in the post. 2. Is Dwight a great post scorer, no. But he can be a damn decent threat when he makes right decisions. Most of the games he has dominated throughout the season he made quick decisions, he had the initiative, the first move. That took the defender off balance and makes his game more natural. My impression is that when he holds up the ball too long he over-thinks his move, loses the surprise element and the move isn't fluid due to the initial over-thinking. 3. Houston isn't a good post passing team. This is on Mchale. Since day one, Dwight is receiving the ball too far from the post, the players always miss him when he has position. I was watching the Memphis x OKC and the Grizzles actually run plays and Gasol and Randolph receive the ball way inside, this should happen with our team, it makes Dwight a legitimate threat and helps the inside offense click, but hey, while spoil our free flowing offense to actually run a few plays
At this point in his career, he should just work on pnr, back-cut alley-oop, base-line reverse slam/layup, getting deep position in the post for and 1s or free throws and play the boards and defend. Stop trying to teach him all this Dream stuff - There is only 1 dream. Just let howard do his thing. What he can learn from dream is to make his move quickly instead of waiting for the defense to set. He needs to quit with all the smiling and I just want to have fun. Get mad - really mad - and prove something to your haters. McHale has to use him better -take timeouts and put him back in after the hack howard nonsense. McHale needs to step up his coaching in general, but specific to howard. Howard is who he is. Harden is who he is. If not Howard, Who? If not Harden, who? If not McHale, who? Not just who you want, but who we can ACTUALLY acquire. Btw, now I know why Asik was not happy with D12 on the Rockets. See 3:20 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKmzDi40LfY
