[Woj] Dwight Howard's dominating debut validates decision to sign with Rockets

With my non-homer glasses on, if I was building a team right now and had to choose between young Kobe and young Harden, I would chose Harden 10 times out of 10.

Scoring plus IQ plus unselfishness. That last part is hard to say about Kobe.

 

A GM lied to a player to get him to come to his team. Yes, even our dear Morey would. He didn't believe that for a second, trust me on that. You could pair Lebron with 4 food truck attendants and they would make the playoffs.

 

This is a case where Woj had most of this article written well before the game started. Dwight had a monster game on the boards and defensively, but he'll have to do a lot more before he erases all the memories from last year.

 

Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

 

What? The Rockets all time rebound leader is Barkley with 27 in 1996.

 

Insanely awesome .

 

Dwight is a physical specimen on par with Hakeem, Shaq, Robinson, Chamberlain, B Wallace, and Russell. I would have babies with all those guys (I'm having a gay moment).

 

No, no, I remember for sure that he had 20 pts, 33 rebounds in his first game as a Rocket.

 

Yeah, same. Maybe it was preseason? Should be easy enough to check on basketball-reference.con.

 

I bet every star free agent in every pro sport goes through something similar, and it's up to both Harden and Howard to make it work. James needs to keep Dwight involved, and Dwight needs to be the best defensive player the Rockets have had since Dream left, and both of these things are doable.

 

What a dominate performance on the boards and defensively. If it wasn't for those B!!!!h A@@ refs Howard's numbers would have been insanely crazy.

 

http://articles.latimes.com/1996-11-03/sports/sp-60933_1_barkley-makes-phoenix

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/X57bkqZqNxE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

That was the game where I became a Rockets fan

 

Great read, thx for posting. Having a good morning so far, so not even gonna scroll to the comments.

 

.... so is this really Harden's team? Or Howard's team?

 

LOL...that can mean two totally different things, and each GM was using the most convenient of the two to persuade Howard on joining their team! Regardless I think we all know which of the two is the right one, and I think Howard does as well! If they can put wins before egos, this team has championship potential written all over it! GO ROCKETS!!!!
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Who the hell cares. It's a TEAM. They play together. And the team does not only consist of two guys. They are the superstarts, but we have outstanding talent around them. Lin, Parsons, Asik - plus Beverley, Garcia, and everyone else.

 

Wow. Sounds like we just simply outclassed everyone in our approach to lure Dwight. Everyone else seemed to stoop to a near childish level (Jerry West, Lakers having Kobe tell him "I can make you great" or whatever it was, and the Mavs making a cartoon animation of him).

 

Harden is a bit of an ISO ballhog. But he isn't on the same level as Kobe. Even last night takeaway the superstar plays to Howard and Harden never made just a simple pass to the low post for Howard. That's not exciting or highlight material. But learning how to effectively post up Howard and repost is necessary.

It's too early to read anything into Harden's trend but setting up Howard in the low post was something they talked about improving all preseason and an inside out type game was supposed to be part of the new strategy. Doesn't look like Harden is buying into that. Not much different from what Kobe was doing to Howard last year.

Like I said it's still too early to say what the future will bring. But make no mistake Harden likes the ball in his hands and loved to ISO last year. I am not talking about moving down court and taking it to the basket deliberately on the move. I am not even talking taking a couple of dribbles and then stepping back and popping a three. I am talking about dribbling and dribbling and then passing 5 seconds or less. I am not convinced that is gone and that is the worst part of his game and part of why some might say he is like Kobe.

 

I'm sure morey has dissed anouther team before I front of a FA. Nothing new, dp whatever it takes to get their sig