If "basketball reasons" had never happened, would it have been possible to have ended up with Harden, Gasol and Nene?
I prefer to believe that Howard has his nagging knee bothering him in the recent period of time. He has looked sluggish and not explosive. So I expect he will play better when he's 100%.
i cringe when he does that spin move in the post and it bounces of his leg out of bounds... i mean plz dwight just run pick and roll and rebound.. give dmo the reigns in the post
Wow! I need to agree with you so I can procreate. Just because someone has a opinion that differs from yours dose not mean they are stupid or have less intellect than you. Other than the no other free agents will want to come this way please name the reasons (That could not be fixed $22M of cap space). Stop calling names and explan, please. He is a very nice player but way over paid, IMO. At the time of his signing we had Asik for a fraction of the cost doing BASICALLY the same FUNCTION. IMO, Howard only came here to get paid and not be in the national media daily aka hide. Why would one leave the LAL with Koby & Paul G. IF one's goal is to win a ring? For those who say we can not win a championship without him... Every other championship was won without him (Trolling but true). The main reason I think we need to move in a different direction is in the final games come down to the final moments in a championship run and Howard can not close out games. Say what you want this is fact.
I'd trade Dwight Cousins, Davis, Drummond even. All because I like the idea of Harden growing with one of these younger centers and the two of them growing together. But since none of those teams will actually do that, I'll be happy enough to keep Howard here.
We don't even need an all star center back for him. Just an all star and serviceable center will work. Think about Dream in his Raptors days that is my biggest fear.
There are too many morons on this board. You will find it very hard to have them understand, and have to often ignore what they say.
No, I'm trying to say that people should stop prematurely announcing the end of an eight-time all-star and three-time Defensive Player of the Year, especially when he's just 29yrs old. Centers age like fine wines, and even if he weren't a center, 29yo still counts as the prime of a career for an NBA HOF-caliber player. A long time ago people were calling for Olajuwon to go at age 29, and look where that got us. Now Dwight's in the same boat: people are saying they would trade him for a bag of bolts just the same way people wanted Olajuwon dealt for Seikaly, Grant, and Harold Minor. Those people were wrong, and these people today are also wrong. That's the only similarity I'm trying to make between Howard and Olajuwon. As a final note: nothing about Dwight's injuries suggests that he will be dealing with them for the rest of his career. Again, I still feel that we as Rockets fans are accustomed to our superstars giving out on us right when they hit 30 because we have been stung in the recent past, by the brittle bones of Yao Ming and the absence of a heart in Tracy McGrady. Keep faith people. Dwight will be ok.
The trade Howard posts are by people who have knee jerk reactions. Thankfully people with those types of reactions aren't running the Houston Rockets. It would be impossible for them to run a team because you'd have nobody left in the NBA to play on the team. They would have all been traded or cut. Howard is struggling right now. He's missing shots that are relatively easy. His defense is still solid. He still draws attention away from other players, and allows D-MO and others to have secondary post defenders on them. Howard is still valuable, and is the only one on the team who's shown that he'll step it up in the post season. He still has the potential to do more, and I'm eager to see that, but there's no need to over react. We should be pretty happy that the Rockets have won 3 in a row. Let's keep it up. I think one of the biggest problems is that we just added some new guys who haven't developed the chemistry the rest of the guys have had all season. That's to be expected. The new guys have talents and skills that we need. No matter what happens our bench is deeper, and Harden and Howard should be able to get more rest. Hopefully the chemistry just develops and grows as these guys play together longer.
Dwight isn't flashy, and he isn't going to put up 25 ppg every night, but He can contribute a solid 18 pts / 12 rebounds a night with a monster defensive presence. We would be stupid to trade currently one of the best centers in the NBA.
My concerns are about the next few seasons more than this one. I think Howard is physical player not a mentally sound one and his body is starting to give out on him all the while Harden is starting to hit his prime. It is about timing nothing more. Harden's prime with Howard's contract = 1st and 2nd round frustations -->good but not good enough. Howard's VALUE is at the highest it will ever be and the team is not good enough per the GM(stating we need a 3rd star - ie Mr.Clutch more tinkering).
Dwight "hater" here - I'm not so sure about the 18 points. But for the sake of argument, I'll accept it as a launching point for my own arguments against keeping him. The issue with Dwight is that he's a 1-way player who's being paid $20M. However, the reason he earned that big contract - his Galaxy-class athleticism and explosiveness - is now fading. Bill Simmons wrote an excellent article that compared Dwight to other big men and showed that he is statistically likely never to regain the dominance of his early years. So I have no reason to believe he's going to look any better in the future (barring the occasional monster game). Meanwhile, he has shown neither the IQ nor the hustle to adapt to not being the most physically dominating player on the court. The lack of IQ is most glaring in his insistence on trying to post up when it's blatantly obvious to everyone that he's terrible at it. A smart player would evaluate his talents and refine his game to maximize them. For example, why the hell is Dwight still so awful at blocking out for rebounds - if he focused on that, he'd not only improve his rebounding numbers but he'd also stop a lot more of the 2nd chance points we give up. If Dwight were on a smaller contract, then I wouldn't even consider looking at dealing him. But I just don't think we can be a championship team with so much money tied into someone who only shows up some of the time and whose ego needs massaging on the court.
Dwight's game will not age well. That's the problem. All of his positives are predicated on his elite athleticism. I think we all agree that this will only continue to decline. I'm not saying trade Dwight now but I'm no longer pinning our hopes on Dwight past this year.
