Reverse Tim Duncan - The Dwight Howard Thread

[HoopsMalone]

Thought that was a good observation too MPM.

He had 7 turnovers last night. It's over and Dwight's the only one who doesn't realize it.

What's over? Certainly not his role on this team, he's been much more successful than I think most on here expected.

I just mean it's over as in stop force feeding this guy on offense. He's been great on the boards and d

[KembaWalker]

its not like all his turnovers are throwing the ball away or getting it stolen. He's getting a lot of offensive fouls even when he doesn't have the ball which he definitely needs to fix. I think he's just hyped up right now and playing super aggressive. And I believe he got a few 3 second calls last night which are usually debatable on whos actually at fault. We are terrible at throwing entry passes and lobs in the post which is probably creating some hesitancy. Batum is missed in this regard

[Mystical Apples]

Dwight struggling in the Post isn't exactly new -- he's been inefficient since Orlando in large part from TOV's combined with diminished athleticism. Ascribing the struggles to unfamiliarity, or Batum's injury for example, sound like excuses Dwight has made these past 6 years rather than confronting the new reality. And IMO, ignoring the expectation-reality gap is a recipe for disappointment (or worse finger pointing by players and fans).

Which isn't to say he's bad or anything but stating he's simultaneously a very good defender and a poor offensive post player is an entirely fair thing to say. NBA half court scoring last season = .93 PPP (no orebs, misc.). When playmaking was involved it was 1.07

Dwight Post Up PPP (percentile)
2013: .75 (37th)
2014: .75 (29th)
2015: .75 (35th)
2016: .82 (45th)
2017: .83 (38th)
2018: .67 (23rd)

[Mystical Apples]

I assume there isn't really any point in discussing his free throws. Its a big issue, but never going to get any better as far as I can tell.

Definitely agree we should be feeding him in the post less. I wouldn't say never, but we have to be more selective. If he gets deep position or has a mismatch then definitely try to get him the ball, but I don't see much point in feeding him just for the sake of it. Maybe give him a couple extra early touches to get him engaged, but otherwise we just need to be more selective.

Essentially how I see it. Minimum number of set touches for buy-in and not a touch more.

[LamarMatic7]

I believe that it certainly should be more than a minimum number of touches. He's been looking very spry, has the right mindset about battling for early position (a couple of those meaningless tangle-ups and offensive fouls/3 second calls aside) and is actually helping not only the team's defense, but also its offense.

All of this should be encouraged. Few centers can hold him back if he's on a mission to out-run or out-muscle someone for close catches:

Read on Twitter

That's not to say that I disagree with you, MA. However, it is both on himself AND the team to only get him the best touches. It's still early in the season and thus it's only natural that there have been many possessions where guys don't him with the pass at the right moment. Yet it's on everyone involved that Dwight gets only the best looks.

As annoying as that might be at times, it's still a real thing. Only the 1% -- the Dennis Rodman's and Reggie Evans's -- will hustle without any other reward. We can see that Howard is helping when he's engaged and being involved. The task from here on out is to preserve that energy of his and only improve his offensive involvement.

You definitely want to see less of these far away catches where he takes way too much time. This finish is certainly a stand out, with many of such possessions ending in worse results.

Read on Twitter

The PPP numbers in post is something I also addressed when tweeting. I saw the same thing. Yet my hunch says that some of his duck-ins and seals simply are under the play type of "cut". He's been very good on those, after all. The clear cut post-ups are the ones on which he has committed turnovers. 0.67 seems way too bad...

That's to say something I probably could have worded in a couple of sentences. More of hitting him when he has low seals in the paint, less of the true one-on-one post-ups. It will do good for everyone.

[chabber]

I'd agree with pretty much everything you said. I'm not a fan of force feeding him the ball for post up scores like in the second video, but if he gets an advantageous position on a play like in your first video, he should be rewarded and get the pass. It keeps his effort up and gives him the opportunity to get the opposing team/player in foul trouble.

I'd say we've done an extremely poor job of getting the ball in place to make proper post passes, when his man is sealed, and when he's being denied, that's not all on Dwight. However I've also seen him sealing guys when it's not necessarily part of the play and having to scurry out of the paint because the ball handler has no passing lane. Hopefully these things will develop over time as they learn to play together. I'm not sure how much we focused on offense in pre-season and the shortness of it is probably showing here.

[Mystical Apples]

I believe that it certainly should be more than a minimum number of touches. He's been looking very spry, has the right mindset about battling for early position (a couple of those meaningless tangle-ups and offensive fouls/3 second calls aside) and is actually helping not only the team's defense, but also its offense.

That's not to say that I disagree with you, MA. However, it is both on himself AND the team to only get him the best touches. It's still early in the season and thus it's only natural that there have been many possessions where guys don't him with the pass at the right moment. Yet it's on everyone involved that Dwight gets only the best looks.

As annoying as that might be at times, it's still a real thing. Only the 1% -- the Dennis Rodman's and Reggie Evans's -- will hustle without any other reward. We can see that Howard is helping when he's engaged and being involved. The task from here on out is to preserve that energy of his and only improve his offensive involvement.

You definitely want to see less of these far away catches where he takes way too much time. This finish is certainly a stand out, with many of such possessions ending in worse results.

The PPP numbers in post is something I also addressed when tweeting. I saw the same thing. Yet my hunch says that some of his duck-ins and seals simply are under the play type of "cut". He's been very good on those, after all. The clear cut post-ups are the ones on which he has committed turnovers. 0.67 seems way too bad...

That's to say something I probably could have worded in a couple of sentences. More of hitting him when he has low seals in the paint, less of the true one-on-one post-ups. It will do good for everyone.

I agree there's a time and place but does Dwight? Because banking on 2017 Dwight finding equilibrium without hindering player movement is a bet to avoid, IMO. Efficient individual PPP or not, the unintended consequences on Charlotte's offense have been a little chilling and not dissimilar to his most recent stops......

In 4 games Kemba has 0 assisted 2P baskets. Jeremy has 0 assisted 2P baskets. Bacon has 0 assisted 2P baskets with the starters. Kemba's 17.2% usage rate with the starters is probably the 1 stat to monitor going forward.

As an aside, for those who use nbawowy their PPP metric is PPPossession compared to PPPlay on the NBA website. Major differences being wowy uses a standard oreb estimate and assigns TOV's to scoring efficiency rather than splitting them between scoring and playmaking attempts.

Neither stat is necessarily better but all things being equal PPPossession is what matters on the team level. It also tends to penalize high volume playmakers and reward scorers with light playmaking volume.

[316Hornets]

Dwight shooting 36.7% from the free throw line through the first 5 games compared to his 56.5% career average.

Watch on YouTube

[Braggins]

Howard is going to be a controversial player here, sort of like Big Al was. Im honestly not impressed with the experiment so far. As far as i can tell the only value he is adding is offensive rebounding and rim protection. His defensive rebounding is negligible because we were basically the GOAT defensive rebounding team without him anyways. Also, our offense has been garbage with him. Im really hoping Batum can make the offense work when he comes back, but so far im not really getting the feeling that the O boards and rim protection are really offsetting the negatives.

[yosemiteben]

I completely disagree. I think Dwight is literally the perfect addition to our center rotation.

He has the highest net rating on the team, higher than Kemba's. He definitely benefits from spending a lot of court time with Kemba, but I think it's pretty obvious he has a positive impact on both ends when he's on the floor.

Do folks remember what life was like when Cody was hurt before? I don't understand how you can say that Dwight is more negative than positive. Like is there another center that would have done better?

I also feel like folks have spent multiple seasons complaining about being weak on O boards and not having a true rim protector.

[Braggins]

Im curious to hear an explanation as to how hes helping us on offense. His atrocious free throw shooting is tanking his ts% and hes turning the ball over like crazy. We have one of the worst offenses in the league so far (also almost dead last in assist related metrics). Its obvious we have spacing issues and hes literally done nothing with PnR. Are you attributing all our offensive woes to Batum being out? Im open to the possibility that the lack of Batum is the main cause, but idk.

Im not writing him off and ill reserve further judgement until we have a larger sample size and hopefully get healthy, but I am still skeptical. I just think there is a fair amount to be concerned about based on what we've seen so far.

[yosemiteben]

Dwight is a simple player that does his role well. Instead of blaming our center for spacing, why not blame our wings and alleged stretch PF that can't spread the floor? It just seems like such a bizarre take to blame Dwight for our spacing issues.

I would be curious to see the advanced stats on his PNR game.

[Mystical Apples]

We have 14 years of evidence. Howard's teams have always been assist/tov disasters. The Hawks 1.50 last season (23rd) was the highest in Dwight's career. And as bad as the Hawks were, they were +.40 without Dwight which is a massive on/off number. It might not seem like a big deal now but we're still 10 games from teams gelling on both ends -- teams lacking movement generally get stuck in the mud as others continue to improve.

Part of me believes Clifford is separating the 1st and 2nd units so they can eventually practice/play different styles when Cody returns. Hard to know with JOB cause he's got his own ball stopping tendencies.

[Braggins]

I didnt mean to put all of the spacing issue on Dwight, but hes a big part of it. If you are a center that cant space the floor at all you need to be effective in the PnR to not hurt spacing and this far he hasnt done that. I missed one of our games and I could be forgetting something, but i can only think of a couple instances of Howard scoring out of the PnR off the top of my head and he doesnt seem to be creating much space for our handlers with his screens or rolling very hard, at least based on the eye test (i could be wrong here).

[Mystical Apples]

I didnt mean to put all of the spacing issue on Dwight, but hes a big part of it. If you are a center that cant space the floor at all you need to be effective in the PnR to not hurt spacing and this far he hasnt done that. I missed one of our games and I could be forgetting something, but i can only think of one instance of Howard scoring out of the PnR off the top of my head and he doesnt seem to be creating much space for our handlers with his screens or rolling very hard, at least based on the eye test (i could be wrong here).

He'd be an All-Star with excellent impact numbers if he mimicked Deandre. Yet here we are, discussing his touches as if it's 2001.

[yosemiteben]

Dwight can't feed himself the ball out of the PNR. He's dealing with three guys with negative court vision and below average passing ability and one PG who would much rather keep the ball.

If Batum comes back and we're still having this conversation, then that will be a red flag, but with our current rotation we have zero set up guys in the starting lineup, hence all the TOs on the embarrassingly bad post feeds.

[Mystical Apples]

Dwight can't feed himself the ball out of the PNR. He's dealing with three guys with negative court vision and below average passing ability and one PG who would much rather keep the ball.

If Batum comes back and we're still having this conversation, then that will be a red flag, but with our current rotation we have zero set up guys in the starting lineup, hence all the TOs on the embarrassingly bad post feeds.

The issue isn't PnR. The issue is slow rolling to an immediate post up or camping orebs instead of re-screening.

[yosemiteben]

Not sure I would agree that our lack of a PNR game is not an issue.

[Braggins]

Dwight can't feed himself the ball out of the PNR. He's dealing with three guys with negative court vision and below average passing ability and one PG who would much rather keep the ball.

If Batum comes back and we're still having this conversation, then that will be a red flag, but with our current rotation we have zero set up guys in the starting lineup, hence all the TOs on the embarrassingly bad post feeds.

This is fair, but Kemba is at least decent at hitting guys out of the PnR. He and Cody are solid together and hes actually pretty good at pocket passes. He and Cody have had years to develop the chemistry, though. I dont necessarily disagree with your stance. Im just probably more pessimistic, as per usual.

[Mystical Apples]

Not sure I would agree that our lack of a PNR game is not an issue.

It's a symptom. When Dwight doesn't roll hard surprsie surprise the reward is a post up or oreb chance. Re-screening on the hand is a largely thankless act.