Some funny quotes from the folks who commented on the article: "Yao is better when he is healthy, but that is only like half of each season." "I would rather have a player who is able to stay on the court then be a model for Armani suits while rehabbing a leg injury." "The only reason Yao shoots a lower percentage is because he has a more complete offensive game." (What? lower shooting percentage because of a more complete offensive game? ROFL)
This one makes sense. Howard's offensive game is around the basket. You are going to shoot a higher percentage when the only shots you take are layups and dunks. Yao shoots jumpshots and hook shots from further out, so his overall FG% is lower but he's better on offense because you can't just force him to make a jumpshot like you can with Howard.
No matter how you spinned it, it's still r****ded to say Yao had a lower shooting % because his offensive game is more complete. It's like saying John Starks is a worse player than Michael Jordan because he is more talented.
No... it really isn't. Yao has a jumpshot, Dwight Howard does not. Generally if your offensive game contains jumpshots, you are going to have a lower FG% than the guy that just plays around the basket. This is why guards generally have a lower FG% than big guys. Think about it using this example. You have one guy taking shots from 5 feet away and another guy taking shots at 20 feet. Who do you think is going to make more of his shots. The guy shooting from 5 feet right? Because shots from 5 feet are MUCH easier. On the other hand, say the 20 foot guy made 50% of his shots, and the 5 foot guy made 60% of his shots. Which guy would you rather have on your team? The 20 foot guy, even though he shot a lower percentage, he has more range. If you are trying to tell me that better FG% means better offensive game, then why do teams even bother with 3 point shooters? I would just pack my teams with post players. You have to consider how these guys are getting their shots.
In 7 head-to-head matchups, Yao has clearly been the better player: http://www.basketball-reference.com/fc/h2h_finder.cgi?request=1&p1=mingya01&p2=howardw01 Yao has owned Howard in every statistical category other than defensive rebounding, steals and turnovers. You could make the argument that Yao has had the advantage of playing on better teams but I don't think that fully explains the difference. Let's see how the numbers look after another 7 head-to-heads.
reality is, howard has a ridiculously high fg %, still he's not as dominant and good on offense as yao is. that's why he only averaged 20 ppg once in his career. he might get all the offensive rebounds with his athleticism and he might be unstopable under the basket when he gets the ball to dunk it. that's how you get a fg % of about 60 %. but that doesn't help you a lot when you've no idea how to hit a free throw or you can't do jack when opponents are able to stop you from getting position under the basket. until now, dwight howard is nothing more than an athletic freak. he has so much to learn offensively it's not funny. sure, he's gotten better since his rookie year and he certainly is in a position where he could just rely on his athleticism and still have a nice career. but the people that are raving about his potential and that's only a matter of 2 or 3 more years until he's better than yao forget that he's already 4 years in the league and he still can't shoot and he still has basically no moves at all. people comparing howard with shaq are insane. shaq came into the league and was a force offensively. he was unstopable and an elite scorer right away. he almost had howard's athleticism but he was a lot bigger and stronger. he also had some basic low post moves. that's why he averaged 29 ppg when he was one year younger than howard is now. basically what i'm saying is that howard is a good player, but until now he's not better than a healthy yao for many reasons. and in the future howard's developement won't be as automatic as people think it will be. howard is no shaq and the probablity that he'll become a fundamentally sound offensive player gets lower and lower every year he's in the league.
We should be comparing Yao to Chris Bosh. If you watched any of the olympics you saw Bosh clearly was a better center than Howard IMO. Yao > Howard.
It's just an awkward way of stating it, but it makes perfect sense. Think about the concept as opposed to the wording. Because Yao has a more versatile offensive game and takes more shots further away from the basket than Howard, he has a lower overall FG%. Howard doesn't have an offensive game outside of 2 feet, therefore most of his shot attempts are dunks or layups. He doesn't have any other option and having more options is a good thing. Every coach in the league would rather have a center that is good at shooting fadeaways and short jumpers on top of dominating in the post over one that can only do the latter. You can make a similarly constructed statement about Brent Barry. Barry had a lower FG% than Tony Parker last season because he is a better outside shooter and takes more shots from behind the arc. The wording is strange but it makes sense. Just because taking a greater number of 3-pointers lowers his overall FG% relative to Parker's, that doesn't mean he should take less 3-pointers. He is still extremely efficient and it benefits the team more than if he passed up on those shots. In Yao's case, by having the ability to hit short jumpers and fadeaways, Yao is benefiting the team. When he can't get inside, those are still usually higher percentage shots than the next guy would take. Yao's versatility and lack of dependency on dunks and layups to score allows him to take more shots per game. Since he is relatively efficient from almost every place he shoots, Yao taking more shots is a good thing.
Did you know that Landry have a 616 FG% or Hayes have a 57 FG% in 07. Yao have a go to move and is a go to guy to create for him self or others. DH, Landry, Hayes etc. Don't have a got to move and can't create for them self or others. Kobe 45 FG% = Andre Iguodala 45 FG% = Rudy Gay 46 FG% (Are Rudy and Andre the same offensive player as kobe? Did they get double team as Kobe? Did defense are set to stop Rudy and Andre as defense are set to stop Kobe?) Same for Yao and DH.
That means there is no best center in NBA if Duncan is not considered a center. No other center can carry his team when it matters. Even Duncan needs a lot help from Manu and Parker.
All I really ever see Howard do is dunk the ball. I don't want to take credit away from Howard cause I really do think he's a good center. But if you're comparing him with Yao, Yao is, hands down, definitely the better center.
I would say Howard is better than Gred Oden for now, since Oden hasn't played a game yet. Wait you are comparing Yao and Howard? What this world has come to...
Yeah, except Bosh isn't a true center and Howard owned him in the playoffs. Apparently, a few games in the Olympics now means more than four years of NBA experience. Yes, Howard didn't play great in the Olympics, but neither did Tim Duncan back when he played. People are unfairly judging Howard based on how he did in the Olympics. It's quite ridiculous, to be honest. People can hate on Dwight's game all they want, but he's still just 22 and would be just fresh out of college if this was the 70s or 80s. Compare his numbers to that of Patrick Ewing's rookie season, who wasn't even in the league at 22, and they're better across the board. Yes, he's raw and has some refining to do, but you very rarely ever come across a 22 year old big man who is refined offensively. Hakeem was horribly raw coming out of Houston, and developed his game. Same with Ewing when he entered the league, and so forth.
Well, wouldn't that mean Dwight has had more of a benefit, because he came into 4 years before those guys did. So it is not really fair to compare Hakeem, Ewing, or David Robinson's progress against Dwight. Because, Howard has been in the (most competitive) league for 4 years against rookies coming out of college. He has had more time than those guys to develop his game, a better comparasion would be a Moses Malone...then at that it was totally different era of basketball. It would be much more fair to compare Howard's fourth year against the 4th of those centers, and you can see he pales in comparasion.
It's not fair to compare him to those others, though, because they didn't play in the league at 18, 19, and 20 years old. Additionally, while they weren't playing in the NBA at Howard's age, they still were in college getting personal one-on-one attention from their coaches. I've always maintained that college is crucial for a players development. Even though the Lebron's, Howard's, and Kobe's of the world have gone on to have huge success in the league, had they had the one-on-one mentoring of a Coach K, Jim Boeheim, Jim Calhoun, etc., their game would be much more developed, IMHO, than it is now. Maybe Lebron would have a jump shot, maybe Howard would have more skills around the basket, and so on and so forth. Don't compare them to how their NBA seasons, but how their numbers compare at as similar age. Howard had considerably better numbers than Ewing did in his rookie season, and he was 23 when he entered the league (Dwight was 22 last season).
I don't know if some of you guys notice this, I saw plenty of times in the past seasons that when Yao was on the court, the opponent simply stop attacking the basket. Instead they would try some midrange jumpers or 3pointers. I could not mumber how many times when a opponent slasher change a on-going layup to a pass just because he saw Yao was near him. When Yao was resting on the bench and Hayes or Scola became the center, the opponent will once again attack the rim and their scores in the paint increase sharply. It's a shame that his impact in the paint just can't be measured by a simple stat thus be ignored by most fans(even some Rockets fans) and medias. He truly is a very underated defensive player IMO.
