In the second sentence, you acknowledge that Howard does not have the footwork of guys like Duncan. Then, you contradict yourself by saying he has Duncan-like footwork in the last sentence. When Howard shoots 75% from the FT line, Chuck Hayes will be teaching high school kids how to shoot free throws. Rebounding does involve instincts but it also involves size, length and athleticism. The reason Howard is a great rebounder has much more to do with the latter attributes than any kind of instinct. Howard is a good shot-blocker and nothing more. I am not sure why but that is a fact. He is nowhere near the shot-blocker that Olajuwon was and is closer to Yao in that category. In fact, Yao is statistically better than Howard.
He doesn't remind me of Hakeem or Shaq. He doesn't have anything close to Shaq's power and mentioning him in the same sentence as Hakeem is sort of disgusting to me. What he does have is good height, great power and insane athleticism. There is nothing wrong with him being the first Dwight Howard instead of fans trying to compare him to all time great Centers. My personal opinion is that with his mechanical movement he will never develop a real jump shot or a fluid inside game but he is going to be a freak athlete for the next decade and he'll be one of the strongest guys in the league until the day he retires. I know he is young but I just don't see him growing much from where he is now. I actually think his numbers may decrease a bit as other teams figure him out. From what I have seen from him he does not have the basketball IQ to make a move to the next level.
I agree with this assessment. I was just making the point that Howard is much closer to a Shaq than a Dream if you had to make a comparison.
What I said was no one will ever have dream footwork,but having shaq or duncan,that's pretty good. U made the comment about his ft shooting, but hasn't the ft shooting gone up? Dream was 60% early and got it up to mid 70's. Look at amare that's at 78%. Why can't anyone expect with his work ethic to improve in that area also. Say what u will, but by next yr, howard will be all nba 1st team.
That is not how you worded your first comments about Howard's footwork but okay. I never said Howard wouldn't be All-NBA First Team. That had nothing to do with my argument. I was making the point that Howard is nothing like Olajuwon in terms of type of player and skill set. He is much more Shaq than Dream and will likely always be much, much closer to that end of the spectrum. Howard is not, and will not be, a finesse player at any point in his career. Olajuwon was a big man with finesse as is Garnett. And, no, Howard's FT% has not gone up every year of his career. In fact, it decreased each season for his first three seasons until it reached a career low .586%. He barely improved last season (.595%) and this season he is at .606% with 30 games left to go. He will likely dip to under .600% as usual and will very, very unlikely ever shoot anywhere near 75% for a season as you suggested. My guess is that Howard will always be treated like Shaq in this respect when he is in tight games down the stretch (i.e., Hack-a-Dwight). Amare has shot well over 70% for most of his career other than his first season where he shot 66%. Even his worst season at the line was much better than Howard's best season.
Howard's not Shaq or Dream. He's a rich man's OT... a very, very good Kevin Willis (with longer arms).
