Reverse Tim Duncan - The Dwight Howard Thread

[geraldwallace]

I can't believe you guys are complaining about a player who is top 5 in blocks and leads the league in rebounds. Aswell as getting 15 points a game on 60 percent shooting.


If he kept up his current play all season he would be in the running for DPOY

[Braggins]

I can't believe you guys are complaining about a player who is top 5 in blocks and leads the league in rebounds. Aswell as getting 15 points a game on 60 percent shooting.


If he kept up his current play all season he would be in the running for DPOY

The defensive impact is nice and so are the O boards, but we are a great defensive rebounding team with or without him and his ts% is actually bad for a player that only shoots point blank shots and free throws (currently like 3% lower than his previous worst season) and his turnover rate is alarmingly bad, so his fg% is misleading and not really indicative of his actual efficiency.

Im not really trying to complain as much as I am just being skeptical. His D is good and his conditioning + effort are encouraging, but other aspects of his game are troubling. Im hoping this all gets worked out over time, but in the meantime i dont think we should get carried away based on his basic box score stats.

[Mystical Apples]

I can't believe you guys are complaining about a player who is top 5 in blocks and leads the league in rebounds. Aswell as getting 15 points a game on 60 percent shooting.


If he kept up his current play all season he would be in the running for DPOY

2nd worst offensive impact after rookie Donovan Mitchell (per nba math)

Read on Twitter

[yosemiteben]

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.

I understand your point, but I don't think whether Dwight rolls hard correlates much with whether he gets fed the ball in the PNR. I think these are two separate problems, and I think our inability to hit the roll man in the PNR is a fairly major problem. Dwight should be getting at least a couple lobs a game.

[bravor]

There is a point which to me is underrated here. Howard is generating early fouls to most of his defenders, which means a lot when we can exploit Cody's skillset from the bench. The counterpart being that this team really needs someone who can run the pnr efficienctly from the bench (and for now, it requires both Kemba & Batum, unless MCW can prove people wrong).

Of course, against teams which are deep at center position, that is another story. We will see if it's just theory soon anyway, as Cody is back in the line up and hopefully one of Batum or MCW soon too (if not both).

At the end of the day, no matter how ugly offensive stats (and eyes test) are with Howard (ofc, they still need to be acceptable), as long as the bench is really killing it.

[Braggins]

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.

I understand your point, but I don't think whether Dwight rolls hard correlates much with whether he gets fed the ball in the PNR. I think these are two separate problems, and I think our inability to hit the roll man in the PNR is a fairly major problem. Dwight should be getting at least a couple lobs a game.

Yeah, its not really fair to put all the blame on Dwight. The couple lobs Kemba has attempted to throw to Howard in the regular season were absolutely awful.

[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 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.

His game is a weird hodge podge of extreme positives and extreme negatives, except most of the negatives are self imposed and not actually reflective at all of his capabilities, which makes it even more frustrating.

[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.

I understand your point, but I don't think whether Dwight rolls hard correlates much with whether he gets fed the ball in the PNR. I think these are two separate problems, and I think our inability to hit the roll man in the PNR is a fairly major problem. Dwight should be getting at least a couple lobs a game.

Dwight slow rolls (mirrors) for a reason...he wants the ball...but Kemba doesn't fit that type of play requiring passing length over defenders. Frank is the better pass back PnP type for Kemba's stature, Cody is next with his gravity dives. Dwight is the absolute worst.

Nic is obviously better for Howard but what's best for Dwight does not equal what's best for 2017.

[Mystical Apples]

Anyone else notice Kemba preemptively going solo in early shot clocks v Houston? That's the beginning of the end -- when the team's best offensive player decides (rightfully) he's better off not waiting.

[HoopsMalone]

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:

He's absolutely KILLING our offense though. We are the freaking Jazz this year.

[LamarMatic7]

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.

Why is Dwight the one to be blamed, however? The starters are doing fine.

Four-man group of D.Howard, J.Lamb, K.Walker, M.Williams are +8.9 (111.5 - 102.6).

[HoopsMalone]

Dwight

[Hornet Mania]

Gasol was a tough matchup for Dwight, he's a rare kind of problem. Usually when a guy drags Dwight out to the 3pt line on defense, Dwight can at least bully ball the stretch 5 on the other end for easy buckets. Gasol is a legit 3pt threat who is built like a Mack truck and will not be bullied by anyone, even Dwight. The worst of both worlds.

Luckily there are only a handful of guys who can present this problem, we got lucky to overcome it thanks to Zeller last night.

[HoopsMalone]

I've had enough of Dwight in with the starters already.

He simply doesn't add enough on defense to make up for tanking your offense. This is getting ridiculous when we have Cody just sitting on the bench all game

[yosemiteben]

I've had enough of Dwight in with the starters already.

He simply doesn't add enough on defense to make up for tanking your offense.

Read on Twitter

Might be a good idea to run some stats in advance of your hot takes.

[HoopsMalone]

I've had enough of Dwight in with the starters already.

He simply doesn't add enough on defense to make up for tanking your offense.

Read on Twitter

Might be a good idea to run some stats in advance of your hot takes.

Lol, thats one heck of a cherry picked stat ya got there

[yosemiteben]

If by"cherry picked" you mean perfectly responsive to your argument, then yes. Your argument is Dwight tanks our offense. The stat measures offensive performance when he is on the floor versus when he is off. I can't think of a more appropriate stat to use. Can you?

Dwight has a +9.7 net rating and 110 ORTG. He objectively isn't tanking our offense.

If you want to see what tanking an offense looks like, look at Monk's -11 net rating and 90.9 ORTG.

[HoopsMalone]

If by"cherry picked" you mean perfectly responsive to your argument, then yes. Your argument is Dwight tanks our offense. The stat measures offensive performance when he is on the floor versus when he is off. I can't think of a more appropriate stat to use. Can you?

Dwight has a +9.7 net rating and 110 ORTG. He objectively isn't tanking our offense.

If you want to see what tanking an offense looks like, look at Monk's -11 net rating and 90.9 ORTG.

It's a horrid response to my argument.

Exactly why it's cherrypicked. Your using Kemba's offensive stats to "explain" Dwight's performance. Multicollinearity ring a bell here?

Dwight is torpedoing the offense, no question. We've got to make the change. Our team can't freaking score.

Dwight postups and free throws would actually be a DECENT option on our 2nd unit right now but instead we're wasting first unit possessions on them.

Our offense is a nightmare and this team isn't making the playoffs if it doesn't turn around quickly.

[yosemiteben]

Dude...was there an actual argument in there somewhere?

Let's make it easier. True or false - when Dwight Howard is on the floor, the Hornets offense is "good", defined as above average among NBA starting units.

Answer - among 5 man units with 60+ minutes played this season (28 total lineups), our lineups with Dwight are ranked 7th (with MKG) and 8th (with JLamb) in ORTG, and 9th and 11th in net rating.

You are making a dumb argument and you look dumb doing it.

Yes Dwight gets to play more with Kemba, but if your argument is that Dwight is tanking our offense then how do your account for offense being top 10 and borderline top 5 in the league with him on the floor?

[LamarMatic7]

You both have valid points. It's almost like both of you are right, but you simply are arguing about different things.

I mean.. Dwight can't be tanking the team's offense when it's performing so well with him on the court. He obviously has flaws, yet he's more or less a player you can fit in with what the Hornets are doing on offense. The starters' offensive rating is impressive.

To HoopsMalone's point, the team is scoring 89 points per 100 possessions when Howard is out there without Kemba. He isn't any lifesaver in that regard. However, the team itself is at 81.2 (!!!!, holy smokes, that''s bad) without Walker on the court. So that is more of a testament to how little creators there actually are on the team. Centers usually can do very little about this, unless it's a Jokic type who organizes the team's offense himself. Hanging above water until Batum comes back is a reasonable objective.