pr0wler wrote:The dropoff of Dwight has been a huge difference this year. 13/12/2 from our "franchise center"? Meh, colour my uninterested. That's basically rich man's Omer Asik.
There's an inconsistency in Dwights effort this year. It might be due to his persistent back injury. He has monster games every once in a while and certainly a couple times a game you see a flash of it. That means his back is getting inflamed periodically or hopefully he's just taking it easy in the regular season. We shall see during the play offs.
The other problem is Howard doesn't know how to play defense without his athleticism. Usually he just tries to block the ball, but when he's taking it easy, he doesn't even TRY to stop a guy from going to the rim. Howard doesn't know how to draw a charge or stand vertical as a form of defense. He's quite often standing in no-mans land (and gets called 3 seconds for it). Howard also gives too much space to guards on a switched PnR, which is fine when he could block your shot despite being 10 feet back, but now he's just giving offensive wings open shots and wide open passing lanes or letting guards get uncontested layups, due to being late on the help defense.
This is affecting team defense as well, because guys don't know when Howard is going to play defense and when he's taking it easy. You can see Ariza/Beverly do the "which way am I going shuffle?" on screens, because they're not sure if Howard is going to hedge and rush back (which he always used to do) or just lazily switch.