Dwight Howard’s third annual summer redemption tour has rolled into the nation’s capital where he has joined the Wizards on a two-year deal.
Howard is, once again, saying all the right things about wanting to be a changed man on and off the floor, doing whatever it takes to be part of a winner and contribute to the Wizards’ playoff hopes. On the court, it’s not hard to see where Howard can help as he has, despite all of his apparent locker room issues, continued to average a double-double every season, no matter what team he’s on.
However, those issues off the court and in the locker room, although details remain scarce, are apparently real because teams don’t just trade players for worse contracts without a reason (and this has now happened two years in a row). In Washington, a locker room that’s had its fair share of tension over the past few years, how he fits in is the most fascinating unknown of this signing.
We’ll have to take a wait and see approach there, while understanding the disaster potential is very much real. On the court, Howard is once again insisting it’s time for him to “evolve” his game to play in the modern NBA, where post-ups are mostly a thing of the past and bigs are asked to spread the floor more and more.
Howard and his trainer Justin Zormelo spoke with Candace Buckner of the Washington Post about that evolution and, well, the names thrown out by Zormelo of who Dwight is trying to model his game after at age 32 are ambitious, to say the least.
“When I came into this league, I was playing against the Shaqs, the Alonzo Mournings, the Jermaine O’Neals and it was more so a physical — I’m going to see who’s the strongest guy in the paint. It’s like an arm wrestling match for the big guys,” Howard says. “And nowadays, it’s not the same game. So it’s either evolve, adapt or get left behind.”
…
“He wants to evolve into Anthony Davis, into Kevin Durant,” Zormelo says, “but his own version of that.”
There are so many things to try and unpack here, but we’ll focus on the key things. First, it’s good that Dwight is acknowledging the need to evolve his game or he’ll be left behind. The problem is, he’s kind of already had that happen because, to this point, he’s been unwilling to make those actual changes for the entirety of a season — the best example being the end of his Hawks tenure.
Beyond the question of whether Howard can actually put the proper changes into action is the issue of him trying to become a player that I don’t think he has the skill set to become. Dwight modeling his game after literally anything Kevin Durant does on the basketball court is patently absurd, and I hope he starts trying to break guys down off the dribble and pull up from 30 feet because, if nothing else, it’d be hysterical.
The Anthony Davis thing is closer to what Dwight can do, but again, it seems he’s intent on showing off a jump shot that he’s never had and likely will never get to a league average mark. For his career, here are Howard’s field goal percentages from various areas on the floor:
Inside 3 Feet: 58.5%
3-10 Feet: 41.5%
10-16 Feet: 28.2%
16+ Feet (inside 3-point range): 33.5%
3-Point Range: 9.5%
Forgive me for not believing that in his 15th season he’s suddenly going to become a marginally decent shooter. The problem for Howard remains the same as it has been for the past six seasons. He continues to listen to people talking about what a big man is supposed to be, and wants to wedge himself into that round hole as a square peg. For years it was Shaq calling him out for not being dominant enough on the block, which led to Howard constantly trying to prove his worth in the post to the detriment of his game and his teams — he’s never been as bad in the post as people will lead you to believe, but it’s simply not the strongest point of his game.
Now, it appears he’s heard too much about what the modern big man is supposed to be as a shooter, and will insist on firing up shots from the midrange and beyond in an effort to show he can be a floor spacer. The problem with all of this is, in his effort to conform, Howard has ignored that the most dominant part of his offensive game is being a lethal roll-man in pick-and-rolls, which also happens to be the thing that makes him valuable in the modern NBA.
For years people have been begging Howard to accept his destiny as one of the most dangerous roll-men in the NBA, setting a screen and darting to the hoop to create a conundrum from defenses of helping off him and leaving open a lob or staying at home and giving his guard space. Through a combination of his own stubbornness and coaches and teammates continuing to allow him to go away from it, he’s not been willing to commit to that as his most valuable asset on offense.
Last season, Howard posted up on 36.3 percent of his offensive possessions, scoring 0.83 points per possession, while being a roll man on only 12.3 percent of his possessions, scoring 1.04 points per possession — he was a spot-up shooter on 6 percent of his possessions for a robust 0.67 points per possession. The only thing Howard was more efficient with last year was, unsurprisingly, putbacks, which accounted for 14.4 percent of his offense at 1.27 points per possession.
So naturally, we enter this season with Howard touting an improved jumper, claiming to want to be some combination of KD and AD, when the point he’s missing is that neither of those players try to do anything but maximize their abilities. If Howard did the same, we might actually get a happy ending to the Dwight redemption story he’s been trying to push for the past three years.
