Hard to criticize Howard's effort level when he's a spectator on offense

dwight started out the game converting on his first postup, a hook off the glass against asik from the right side of the lane. i didn't see him get another postup after that (pls correct me if i'm wrong). and i have to question bickerstaff's game strategy and control over his players on that.

if gentry is sending help (or threatening to by shadowing dwight) then you still feed the post and force NOP to commit to the double and face the consequences. it sure beats the hell out of jones or brewer etc jacking up a hopeless contested shot attempt. and as we know, it also makes dwight feel more involved, and therefore more willing to clean up his teammates' mistakes on D and missed shots on O. dwight scored well in the paint against this team the 2 games he was healthy last season and played real minutes, having his way with omer.

i doubt that dwight, who clearly wants more post touches, is camping out at the FT line because he simply doesn't feel like posting up. more likely he's following coach's instructions or is simply frustrated to the point of not even wasting his energy battling for post position anymore.

 

Did Mark Eaton need offensive touches to play D??? If you're getting $22M a year, you do whatever the f*k the team wants you to do and be happy about it.

 

Dwight Howard has spent absolutely no time in his over decade long career at developing even a basic post game. Why they hell should the rockets spend time wasting possessions doing so?

 

agree completely. but besides maligning DM and les for giving him that contract, i think the only thing we can do from a practical sense now is at least partially oblige him and make him feel he's more involved in the offense. sure his postup game is less varied and less polished than even pippendagimp's. but he is what he is, and while he's on the floor we should aim to keep him happy enough to play hard on D and on the glass.

 

We don't need to force teams to pack the paint, they are already doing it in order to stop Harden from driving. It's been happening since opening night.

After I posted the video from last night it now seems that it's gone from the idea that Dwight is open and we aren't getting the ball to a new idea that the coaches game plan is taking him out of the game. I certainly don't know what the game plan was but I will guess that it didn't include Dwight not attempting to offensive rebound the majority of Harden's shots. Likewise I doubt that they told Dwight not to dunk an offensive rebound from directly I'm front of the hoop when we were trailing by 2 late in the game.

 

While I do feel Dwight needs the ball more ,he also needs to be a team leader and not pout because he is not getting enough shots. He's not playing great in the post at all. When he did in the Clippers game the Rockets were very willing to give him the ball. Omer gave it to him Saturday; a game where he's playing someone whose is not even complete healthy and he was out hustled. Dwight cannot demand the ball just get his shot count up he has to have the mind set of setting the tone and creating impact. He can rebound the ball better, run the floor better and plays like that get him the ball more. Also he makes some of worst fouls at key times in games, which does not allow him to ever get in the rhythm of the game. Eventually, this guy is going to have to learn to actually think the game to get what he wants. Even Shaq could not Fee Fi Fo Fum his way to an NBA title. While I am not comparing Shaq to Howard in overall talent, even he had to learn the game from Hakeem before being able to also mentally play the game like a champion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPkNCnqZ9Fo

 

sagging low / casually packing the paint to stop penetration is not the same as davis (or another help defender) actually turning and committing to a double on dwight in the paint. it is much more difficult to recover off this 2nd scenario when the ball is swung to the open man/cutter.

and when harden was sitting while dwight was on the floor, the gameplan certainly didn't seem to include getting the ball to dwight -- either on postups or via pnr.

 

Maybe Harden doesn't listen to the coach.

 

Not really. Harden is taking 19.9 shots per game, there's plenty of shots to go around. Just look at OKC, Westbrook is taking 19.2 shots, Durant 17.4, Ibaka 11.9,Waiters 9.6 and Kanter 8.1.

Harden is going to get his shots, he's one of the elite offensive players in the game. I seriously doubt that even Howard thinks that he should be taking shots away from Harden.

For Howard to get shots, it's going to have to come in situations where he is efficient: PnR, cuts to the hoop and putbacks off of offensive rebounds. Right now, due to the way teams are packing the paint on us, it's difficult for Howard to get those type of opportunities.

 

Either scenario, a straight double or just packing the paint, both negate Howard's effectiveness. When teams are playing us that way it's futile to throw the ball to Howard try and force things.

The Pelicans continued to play the same defense when Harden sat so PnR or Dwight postups aren't going to work. Truthfully, until we start shooting the ball more consistently from behind the arc, would you play us any other way?

The fact is that on almost every single one of those 21 shots, Howard wasn't even really attempting to postup. He also didn't really attempt to offensive rebound on many of those shots.

Can I assume that we've put to bed the idea that Howard is getting great post up position and just getting ignored and now we've moved on to the idea that it's the system that is putting him in the wrong position?

 

The myth about Howard as a bad post player must fall. It is simply false.

http://stats.nba.com/tracking/#!/pl...SeasonType=Regular Season&CF=POST_TOUCHES*G*6

He has a higher "points per post touch" ratio than Marc Gasol, Tim Duncan, Al Jefferson, Zach Randolph, Blake Griffin, DM COusins... Still, interestingly people keep cursing a lot every time Dwight throws a brick in the paint but nothing happens when harden bricks another contested three... People just must change that approach.

Also, speaking about touches, Gasol recieves 7-8 more elbow touches than Dwight, obviously he's a much better player from the elbow. Anyway the point is that he is being properly used by his team and Dwight is not (he is at the p&r but must be more and better used in the post.)

If Howard is not in the post and Harden has the ball outside that's not a situation that has been reached unexpectedly, team tends to look for thet Harden but not for Howard's shot. This is high-level basketball, this is not 3on3 streetball, your big man does not receive the ball without the help of the entire team. Howard shouldn't be forced to fight against the world to receive a freaking ball. It is the team for its own sake who must guide the offense to ease his reception and provide him of post touches. Only because it is the best for the team. The team won't compete high goals until it changes the current trend that accepts that jacking a three it's ok but Dwight missing a 1on1 in the post is completely unacceptable. Yesterday the ball didn't crossed the paint in the last 8 minutes. Many outside shots, turnovers, predictable ISO plays, and 2 premier post players like Howard and Motiejunas sitting on the bench, watching how his perimeter mates take turn to brick shots or play 1on1, p&r's at the best. And still after that scene some people comes here to blame Dwight Howard. Just unbelieveable.

 

i have to disagree that it's futile to throw the ball into dwight at all. if we can get 4 or 5 players touching the ball in a halfcourt possession, this generally bodes well for ball movement and better odds of getting a quality look (given that we don't burn the first 15sec of the shotclock just pounding ball before even initiating the play like we often do right now).

and getting the ball in or near the paint area also gives us a much higher chance of capitalizing on opposing players' defensive mistakes as well. for every couple of times dwight has nothing inside and has to swing it, there will be that instance someone reaches or doubles off the wrong guy etc.

right now our offense just seems so predictable, and i don't know if that's due to coach's instructions, or perhaps the players being scared of committing turnovers on passes inside. and our horrid spacing certainly doesn't help -- it's one of the reasons that teams have been able to pack the paint on us so well.

regarding 3's, we drained 15-33 last nite for 45.5%, so i'm not sure how much better we need to shoot in order to allow dwight more than 4 shots.

 

This doesn't mean what you think it means.

 

People rather look at useless numbers than actually watch basketball

 

I always knew James was on Clutchfans..

 

The point is that Howard IS getting post and paint touches. In fact, he's in the top 2 or 3 in the league. Everyone like to pretend that Howard hasn't gotten any post/paint touches this year but that's simply isn't true. He's getting as many as most anyone in the league.

This whole thread is based on the premise that we shouldn't expect Howard to show any effort because he wasn't getting touches. That simply isn't true, he's one of the league leaders in post and paint touches.

BTW, in the month of December Harden is shooting 39.3% on three's that's way more efficient than a Howard postup. Outside of Harden we don't shoot that many contested 3's and Harden's good at them (over 34% for the season).

Dwight isn't "fighting against the world" to receive the ball. He isn't even trying to post up on most possessions. He's also not attempting to offensive rebound on many of those same possessions.

As for the idea that isn't a good postup player, that's true. All you have to do is look at his PPP on postups. It's a feeble 0.72 . In comparision, here's the PPP of other bigs on their postups:

Duncan 1.0, Favors 0.94, Vucevic 0.92, Cousins 0.92, B.Lopez 0.91, Aldridge 0.90, KA Towns 0.89, P. Gasol 0.88, Griffin 0.86, M. Gasol 0.85, R.Lopez 0.84, Monroe 0.83, Okafor 0.83, Jefferson 0.83, Horford 0.80, Randolf 0.79, A. Davis 0.76.

You really don't want to depend on an offensive option that produces 0.72 PPP. We instead depend on our spot up shooting (Harden 1.25 PPP, Beverley 1.08, Thorton 1.02, Jones 1.0, Ariza 0.87, Lawson 0.86). Even Brewer's spotup shooting (0.76 PPP) is higher than Howard's post up PPP.

Likewise Harden produces 0.94 on ISOs.

Even shooting as badly as we have, we still have many other options that are more efficient than a Howard postup.

 

We get lots of quality looks, we're one of the leaders in uncontested 3's. We're just missing shots. In fact, Harden's actually shooting a higher percentage on contested 3's than he is on uncontested 3's.

I understand what you're saying about ball movement and looks but the problem is that those looks are going to come from the guys that the opposition want to shoot the ball.

Dwight's is efficient in PnR, putbacks and cuts. That's how he should be used. Increasing his postups when he's that inefficient (0.73) makes no sense.

You are correct that we are predictable but that doesn't mean that teams can stop our offense. Sure teams know what we're tying to do but the premise is that a team can't stop both Harden's penetration and our outside shooting. They have to pick one or the other to try and stop and then we should make them pay with the other. That of course only works if we shoot at a league average or better from behind the arc.

We did shoot well last night but Dwight wasn't even attempting to postup as the video that I posted showed but that's not what he should be doing anyway. If we shoot well enough to force teams to open up the paint then Dwight should be getting his points off of cuts and PnR, not postups. Basically, Dwight should be playing like Deandre Jordan.

 

This is quite a find. You should post that on the internet somewhere. Maybe send it to ESPN and TNT, so the national media will stop talking about Howard's post ups in a negative manner. I'm sure once you show those stats to more people, the world we come around.

You should start with this guy on ESPN. What a stupid comment he makes about Dwight's post-ups, no longer ago that Dec 24th even.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=14433016

 

Translated: "Don't ask me to backup anything I say".

 

You call those half court hook shots prior to every game not a post game practice?