Why is Dwight Howard scoring so much less this year?

"A good basket?" Aren't they all good? Do you mean a good look at the basket? Offensive rebounds are pretty damn good looks at the basket, no?

Regardless, SportsVU player tracking data shows that he's getting the 2nd most Post/Paint touches in the league, and several comparable players score at a higher to significantly higher ppp -- Drummond, Favors, Jordan, Hibbard and Capela.

How do you get a player more touches who is already getting the 2nd most in the league?

We need to focus more on getting Lawson involved and getting Harden more easy looks (off ball, weak-side counters, transition due to better defense, etc). That will open the game for the entire team. I don't get yourinfatuation with just Howard. That's not the proper team strategy/concept thinking about him so much. It's not.

 

We only score 28% of the time we post him up and we've finally got him to realize that unless he has his man under the rim, alley oop, or rebound put back is the only way he can score.

His post game is Waste Management!

 

Seems reasonable to reference it in the same context as available stats. That way there's a basis in reality to prove the point.

Who's talking about Dwight "getting the ball on a postup possession,holding it while the cutters cycle out of the paint and then putting the ball on the floor"? Nobody but you ever mentioned that. The NBA definition is that he catches the ball with his back to the basket and less than 15 feet from the hoop. Basically, take away his alley oops, hoops off cuts and his putbacks off of offensive rebounds and that's what's left and he's really bad at it.

So where is he getting all of these pindown hoops? Here's the categorization of every shot Howard has attempted this season with video. Where are all of these highly efficient pin downs? Can you show them to me?

http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/2730/stats/shooting/

As mentioned above, where are all of these pindowns occurring? I just spent half an hour watching the video of the various categories of Howard's shots and I didn't even find one, though I didn't watch it all. In your mind how many of these pindowns is he scoring on per game? How many of those do you expect for him to get under the best of circumstances?

Maybe in your mind Dwight only gets postups late in the clock, but in reality he get's lots of postups early in the clock. The real issue is that Dwight just isn't very good if he's 3 feet or more from the hoop. Of his 122 shots, 63 of them have come from 3 feet or more and he's 27/63 on those shots.

Of those 63 shots that he's taken from 3 feet or more, only 7 of those shots were taken with less than 6 seconds on the shot clock and he was 3/7 on those shots.

Of those same 63 shots that he's taken from 3 feet or more, only 27 of those shots were taken with less than 10 seconds on the shot clock and he was 13/27 on those shots.

Of those 63 shots that he's taken from 3 feet or more, 12 of them were taken with 20 or more seconds remaining on the clock. So, he's actually taken over 1.5 times as many shots with 20 sec on the clock than he has with 6 or less seconds on the clock.

You don't limit his touches, you limit his touches other than cuts, PnR and putbacks.

What my post "clearly" showed is that he's really bad at postups. Did you notice the things that he's good at? Basically if he's in a position to dunk the ball or lay it in on the glass then he's efficient. If he's more than 2 ft away from the hoop, he's inefficient.

Look at Dwight's numbers. It's not about the quarter or the shot clock, it's about how far is he from the basket. You keep saying that's he's the 3rd or so most efficient player on the team but that's only true because of the alley oops, cuts and offensive rebound putbacks. Remove those things and he's right there with Brewer. I have no problem with him getting more touches but they need to be the efficient kind of touches (cuts, putbacks or alley oops). There's absolutely no reason to have him do anything else.

Same as above. He's only efficient if he's within 2 ft of the basket. Give him all of those chances that you can but don't give him any additional looks from 3 feet or more from the hoop.

Again, that's your perception but it's not true. The bulk of his possessions are early in the clock. He gets very few possessions late in the clock.

So teams are changing their defense based on who possesses the ball? Really? So Harden has the ball and everyone packs the lane. Harden then passes the ball and teams immediately rush out to cover our shooters at the arc? Ball goes back to Harden and they fall back again? Do you really believe that? You don't think that would be really easy to beat? Give the ball to Harden have him pass and then as the players are transitioning from the paint to the 3 point line, just give the ball right back to Harden and he's got an easy path to the hoop before the defense could adjust.

If you truly believe that teams are playing up on our 3 point shooters then how do you account for the fact that we get a ton of uncontested 3 point shots? We take less than 8 contested 3's per game and almost half of them are Harden's (mostly step back shots). Additionally, this season Harden is actually shooting better on contested 3s than he is on uncontested 3s.

I know that contested 3's have been cited on CC.NET as the cause of our problems but in reality they aren't that big of a deal. Once you eliminate Harden's contested 3's, that only leaves 4.5 contested 3pt shots per game. Our shooting percentage is +6% on uncontested 3s vs contested 3.s. So for 4.5 shots that's a difference of 0.81 points per game. Even if you include Harden's contested 3's it only a difference of 1.31 pts/game.You can check my math, but that's such a small issue that it isn't even worth discussing.

 

You are going about this backwards.

A naturally productive Howard is a sign of a good offense. That means that the ball is moving, oops are being thrown, and he is the recipient of many passes because of penetration. When the offense starts flowing, he may arguably benefit the most, ex. Orlando game when he was 10/10.

Forcing a productive Howard is not a sign of good offense. Dumping the ball to him to fulfill a numbers quota is not the way to go.

Howard needs to get more touches, but it has to come within the flow of the offense, and his lack of touches is evidence of a stagnant offense.

 

Good post. I agree with it. Don't force it. However, running a set pick-and-roll with Howard isn't forcing it. For the ball to be moving properly it's got to find him inside early and often. Right now, our perimeter guys aren't interested in ball movement. They're interested in going to the rim themselves and launching 3's.

 

But SportsVU player tracking data has Howard as #2 in the league for combined touches in the paint and touches in the post.

What I think you are actually agreeing with aelliott on is we need to convert his post play with "cuts, putbacks or alley oops," -- aelliott and "within the flow of the offense," -- jbasket. Lower one and increase the other. But since he is the #2 player in the league for touches in the Paint/Post "it will be a Zero Sum Game on total number of touches" -- heypartner.

 

And of course, it won't be the same against each defense. In fact, tonight against the Mavs, we might be able to attack Nowitzki like we did in the playoffs, which was a highlight reel for Howard to camp near the rim (weakside) and get alley-oops when Chandler is forced to help Nowitzki.

 

He looks tight for the most part, None of his moves have any sort of explosion to them unless he has time to gather himself.

Movement is getting better a little bit but nowhere near how he looked in May where he was getting his head at the rim on some dunks.

 

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How he moved then compared to now is waaaaaaaaay different

 

So, basically, great minds think alike?

 

See, that last game was a perfect example of what we are talking about.

The ball movement was fluid. There was good penetration. The guards acted like they cared to go North and South on the PnR, forcing the big to help.

What happened? Dwight was very productive. He was given the ball in great positions down in the paint and given great opportunities to score. With Dwight getting his touches and offense going, we then fed him the post up against Kostas that he made as well.

Dwight's productivity is a measure of the fluidity of the offense. It looked well last night.

 

If we only play him against the good center matchup on back to backs, naturally his numbers will be down. He doesn't get as many chances to pump up the numbers by feasting on lesser talent.

 

Good call. We need Dwight to be effective. First he needs to stay healthy, second, Pick n Roll with James Harden should be the answer to improve his and Beard's scoring.

 

Because he is not that good anymore at offense and is in serious decline.....he is an excellent rebounder, and rim protector, but his offense is sinking to Omer Asik like proportions.

DD

 

Everybody keeps going on about Dwight's lack of touches, but Dwight has actually been getting the ball in the post, but he's not being selfish and taking shots. He's been doing great at getting the defense to collapse and kicking out for the three. I've especially liked his willingness to pass into the weakside corner from the post. Could he take more shots? Yes. But I'm perfectly content with him sucking in the defense when he's on the block and passing out. It's been giving everybody a lot of space to operate with on the perimeter.

 

The less he shoots, the better for the offense. He shouldn't be anything more for us than a DeAndre Jordan or Tyson Chandler. Be a defensive role player that cleans up the boards and finishes alley oops

 

Best defender and rebounder on the team.

Shoots 60% from the field.

"Trade him because his scoring average dipped two points."