dwight howard is not a great defender anymore. He is very good. A good one on one defender, but his help defense, although decent, is not good anymore, not great. I'm not sure if he's still getting over that back injury, but he is definately not great enough to cover for everyone's weaknesses. He is not good enough to cover for our weak perimeter defense. As I've stated, we need good defenders at the 1 and 3, and beverly is only in there sometimes, while parsons is highly over rated with his D. Jeremy lin is decent, but not good. Until we fix this problem we will never contend for a championship. I think that getting out of the first round is our ceiling at this point.
players probably try harder, since their paint defender left. there's something to be said about mentality and motivation when you have a beast waiting at the rim. It probably makes outer defenders feel more secure, when in reality they should still fight just as hard defensively.
Last year I had 4 bad tires in my car. This year, I put 2 brand new expensive tires in back wheels but my still my car is shaking like hell. I know, I know.... fron tires are not that good, but still these are very expensive high quality tires at the back. Damm it, can you explain it? This analogy may be silly... but so OP's argument. .
http://www.sloansportsconference.co...of Interior Defense Analytics for the NBA.pdf You can ALL REP ME
Blame McHale for the Rockets' early defensive woes. The Twin Towers attempt was a completely disaster and ironically made our defense worse. Dwight can't improve the Rockets' terrible perimeter defense because he's in the paint. The Rockets can significantly improve their defense by lowering the number of open threes (especially in the corners) opposing players attempt. The perimeter plays need to guard tighter and stop ball watching and losing their man.
Thank you. Nothing more annoying than people who look at TEAM stats to measure an individual player's defense.
Asik was already one of the best defensive centers in the league so it's not as if Howard was going to be a huge upgrade at defense. Howard is supposed to be more of a significant upgrade on the offensive end.
I tend to think of Asik as a Yao Ming type defensive presence that can actually move his feet on the pick and roll. Asik obviously isn't as athletic as Dwight, but hes a huge body that has good footspeed and really clogs the paint. Dwight, heightwise, is only 6'9, 6'10, but he has a standing reach of about 9'4. Basically means you've got a 'shorter' more agile/explosive player that can cover ground and block shots. He is an immense defensive presence, and hopefully with time the chemistry on the defensive end will rise. Would love another wing defender though.
What do you not get? New players mean learning where to be in your defensive program, switches, no switching. Where to be, sagging off, trusting teammate to pick up. But most importantly, bring up stats of points given up in paint with DH on floor. You are looking at defense rating as a blunt average...... I dont get how you do that.
I'll explain this to the OP. Asik was already great on defense. Howard was not supposed to be significantly better than Asik. The reason people thought this team would be better defensively was because when Howard sits, another fantastic defender (Asik) would take his place. So there would be no drop off in defense when your defensive anchor left the floor. It's 48 minutes of elite rim protection. But Asik has pouted, missed several games, and the Rockets just recently started using Asik exclusively as a back-up. So we are really just getting started with seeing how well the defense can play... until Asik gets traded.
Asik didn't really try to block shots, he'd go back for the rebound. While that helped our dreb%, it also meant players shot a high % at the rim because they weren't exactly afraid. Dwight goes to block shots, players needing to make shot adjustments or just getting blocked has been quite frequent (Hakeem seems to have also got the controlled block into dwight's head, we're getting a lot of the ball off them), however this means someone else needs to rotate over (which wasn't happening early but i've noticed it improved the last few games)
If you want to understand the Howard effect you must read this document: http://www.sloansportsconference.co...of Interior Defense Analytics for the NBA.pdf
Nice read. It something I already knew but it reaffirms this. Dwight Howard is the best defender in the league because he makes players second guess their shot. If any of you go back and watch the game their is atlesst 9-12 instances were the opposing player changed and missed his shot within 5 ft of the basket while Dwight was contesting the shot. This also to go along with his 4 blocks and 2 goal tends ( 1 was a good blk) but non the less gets into the opposing teams head. I don't think there's a player that is game planned by opposing teams on defense than DH. The eye and stat test say he's been 2010 Dwight Howard on defense since inserting tjones into the starting line up. I think he's been playing with great effort and determination and is clearly the early front runner for defensive player of the yr IMO. Once the team gels and starts taking better care of the ball the numbers will show we our a good defensive squad. The perimeter defense while bad at times has been good enough majority of the time to get big leads in every game this season but 1. The potential for this team on both sides of the court is scary good. Once Dwight and harden mesh and the othe players get used to playing with both this team will really take off. To me it seems that we know how to play with one superstar (harden last yr) (Dwight last night) but over think things when both our playing. This is going to take time as it does with all number one options who get used to sharing the load, but the beauty of it all is when they do click it will be scary good because both players are tops for their position and bring so much to any basketball team while also being very team first guys. We have a good combo with harden and Howard with secondary rocket stars as is call them in Lin and parsons with solid role players in bev and jones. That 6 players rights their have so much talent and major room for imrovment. Players come and go but they all much stay unless you have to package Lin for a superstar but even that's getting trickier with the way Lin and jones have been performing you almostbcantbget rid of either because of future options their contract and talent allow the team to do later.
Howard has not been his usual self mainly (IMHO) because he was miscast early in the season as a PF. That is not his natural position and so his defensive stats are not what they should be. As the data piles up I believe that Howard's stats will slowly revert to those he displayed in Orlando.
I meant when Dwight was on offense. Bargnani pretty much shut Dwight down. Bargnani holds his opponents to only 35.2% shooting when he is within 5 feet of their shot. 2nd best in the league only behind Larry Sanders who holds them to 34.9%. Seeing that, it makes sense why Dwight had trouble scoring points against him.
