Howard's 15-Footer Coming Along Quicker Than Post Game

[Shine88 80]

quote:

Dwight Howard spent the majority of his time this summer working on his jumper, even though much of the criticism he has received has been for his lack of low-post game.

 

"People say that, but when you get double-teamed every play, it's hard to get post moves," Howard said. "My biggest thing is passing out the double team and allowing my guys to get shots, trusting them. That way I have an easier chance to score."

 

Howard said he worked on it every day and even circulated a video this summer in which he ran up and down a court drilling 15-footers.

 

"That's all I did, just get in the gym and work on my shot," Howard said. "Couldn't simulate double teams and all that stuff, just every day working on my shot."

 

http://www.orlandosentinel.com...ct02,0,2745550.story

 

If his shot is coming along like he say it is, then I can see him having MVP season. Especially if he could make around 70-75 percent of his free throw this season.

[Shine88 80]

quote:

Dwight Howard spent the majority of his time this summer working on his jumper, even though much of the criticism he has received has been for his lack of low-post game.

 

"People say that, but when you get double-teamed every play, it's hard to get post moves," Howard said. "My biggest thing is passing out the double team and allowing my guys to get shots, trusting them. That way I have an easier chance to score."

 

Howard said he worked on it every day and even circulated a video this summer in which he ran up and down a court drilling 15-footers.

 

"That's all I did, just get in the gym and work on my shot," Howard said. "Couldn't simulate double teams and all that stuff, just every day working on my shot."

 

http://www.orlandosentinel.com...ct02,0,2745550.story

 

If his shot is coming along like he say it is, then I can see him having MVP season. Especially if he could make around 70-75 percent of his free throw this season.

[gporter 5]

It has always been the idea that the more age and experience Dwight gets, the better passer he will be out of the post.

 

Imagine if he passed like Tim Duncan, while maintaining his current freakish athleticism.

 

Then there is the shooting ability and free throw percentage. So much area for improvement for somebody who is already the best Center in the game.

 

Vince will replace Hedo, Jameer will be Jameer, and Ice-0 will be Rashard Lewis, but the success of the team will fall almost entirely on Dwight's shoulders... regardless of our massive depth.

[Knappy 0]

quote:

Originally posted by truth393:

quote:

Dwight Howard spent the majority of his time this summer working on his jumper, even though much of the criticism he has received has been for his lack of low-post game.

 

"People say that, but when you get double-teamed every play, it's hard to get post moves," Howard said. "My biggest thing is passing out the double team and allowing my guys to get shots, trusting them. That way I have an easier chance to score."

 

Howard said he worked on it every day and even circulated a video this summer in which he ran up and down a court drilling 15-footers.

 

"That's all I did, just get in the gym and work on my shot," Howard said. "Couldn't simulate double teams and all that stuff, just every day working on my shot."

 

http://www.orlandosentinel.com...ct02,0,2745550.story

 

If his shot is coming along like he say it is, then I can see him having MVP season. Especially if he could make around 70-75 percent of his free throw this season.

 

Dwight is getting great coaching and they will add to his evolution. Stan and Patrick will get him to work on things they would like to see him improve and Dwight will add his two cents or millions.

 

Anyway, I expect Dwight to continue to get more dominant each year for a while yet.

[MagicFan7687 0]

im pretty pumped to hear of this news, dwight does have enough post moves but like he said its hard to execute and practice those moves when double teamed, hope to see him hitting those 15 footers though

[Skywise316 211]

Well Dwight already has a good amount of post moves, like the Spin Cycle (think Shaq flop), he has the up-and-under, obviously he's nearly impossible to stop on the alley oop without fouling, running baby hooks with either hand.. that's just off the top of my head.

 

If Dwight has managed to make his short jumper more than just a "work in progress," and can keep his FTs at a steady 70% like he did for most of the playoffs, then he did a good job this Summer.

 

Now it's up to Stan and Patrick to keep working with him on how to deal with these double teams during the season. Less turnovers, better passes out, and so on.

[InsideoutO 0]

I think the L has a big problem this season. Dwight is going to come out stronger on both ends of the court. I have no doubt he will put up 2-5 jumpers a game and shoot a mid 40% on those shots. I think our boy is going to avg 25+ppg and I agree he will be a strong candidate for MVP.

[Ryan the Magic Fan 253]

If dwight can jump up his free throws too 70-75% percent then i think he may be averaging more then just 25 pts a game. he will be hitting more foul shots, but it also means that teams will start hesitating in fouling dwight, which means a lot more easy points and 3 point plays. i think hes capable of putting in 27-28 ppg if he really steps his game up

[VaBchMagicFan 0]

Every dominant big guy gets doubled and Dwight does not get doubled as often as people think due to the shooters around him. Actually the most productive way of playing Orlando is actually not doubling, because Dwight has proven when he has to create his own shot he struggles. Not to mention the key is making your move before the double comes,split the double, or make a move the opposite way the double is coming. I would love Dwight to watch the Perkins or Bynum guarding him one on one and then for him to repeat the ridiculous statement that their is not a problem with his post game.

 

Is it more than that? Yeah, but he relies solely on strength and athleticism and guys who can match that have proven that Dwight lacks the skill to put be the focal point of an offense. He better improve his post moves or Sheed and Perkins will send us home.

[Magicfan1961 0]

quote:

Originally posted by VaBchMagicFan:

Every dominant big guy gets doubled and Dwight does not get doubled as often as people think due to the shooters around him. Actually the most productive way of playing Orlando is actually not doubling, because Dwight has proven when he has to create his own shot he struggles. Not to mention the key is making your move before the double comes,split the double, or make a move the opposite way the double is coming. I would love Dwight to watch the Perkins or Bynum guarding him one on one and then for him to repeat the ridiculous statement that their is not a problem with his post game.

 

Is it more than that? Yeah, but he relies solely on strength and athleticism and guys who can match that have proven that Dwight lacks the skill to put be the focal point of an offense. He better improve his post moves or Sheed and Perkins will send us home.

 

 

If Dwight develops his jump shots successfully and makes a high percentage of his free throws, and becomes serious about playing, he will be unstopable. Sheed is old, has bad knees and was considering retiring. Dwight is young and will only get more skilled offensively. Dwight has a great coach and Sneed only has so so coach

[bravlady 0]

I surely hope Dwight worked on his hook over the summer because it was looking pretty sad there at the end of the playoffs.

[Secretly Space Jesus 670]

quote:

Originally posted by VaBchMagicFan:

Every dominant big guy gets doubled and Dwight does not get doubled as often as people think due to the shooters around him. Actually the most productive way of playing Orlando is actually not doubling, because Dwight has proven when he has to create his own shot he struggles. Not to mention the key is making your move before the double comes,split the double, or make a move the opposite way the double is coming. I would love Dwight to watch the Perkins or Bynum guarding him one on one and then for him to repeat the ridiculous statement that their is not a problem with his post game.

 

Is it more than that? Yeah, but he relies solely on strength and athleticism and guys who can match that have proven that Dwight lacks the skill to put be the focal point of an offense. He better improve his post moves or Sheed and Perkins will send us home.

 

Well, I'll ignore the Bynum comment because, despite your attempts to state the contrary, LA doubled Dwight CONSTANTLY during that series; they just didn't have one particular person they were sending. In other words, they kept Dwight from knowing where the double was going to come from, but he was frequently in the paint surrounded by 3-4 people, which is the same strategy they used, to great effect, in the regular season. Why do you think Dwight was only shooting 8 shots a game in that series? You are literally arguing something that is completely false.

 

It's also worth noting that Bynum played less than 19mpg that series, and averaged over 4 fouls per game, and as a general rule, when you're averaging over 8 fouls per 36, you're not demonstrating good defense. So if you're going to stick with the "Don't double Dwight because Dwight sucks" as you seem to insist on, stick with people like Perkins and Yao Ming as your examples, because they're really the only two examples that work consistently. I find it remarkable that you'd argue a point as being 100% true using 2 playoff series as an example(when one doesn't even apply, no less), and ignore the other 2 playoff series where your point was proven ridiculous by Dwight's tearing the Sixers and Cleveland limb from limb.

 

And since I can't stand having to write the same post twice in two days, here's something I wrote yesterday on the same topic on another board:

 

quote:

I agree with tsherkin about TOV% over straight TOs.

 

In reality, it would've been relatively normal for Dwight's TOs to have gone up the last two seasons; he was handling the ball on a much greater number of possessions(USG% was 26.1 last year, up from 24.2 and 22.7 the previous seasons), so the fact that he was handling the ball more while turning the ball over less, both in terms of raw numbers and in terms of percentage of used possessions, is VERY encouraging. If Dwight ever learned to not camp in the paint for so long early in possessions and/or his teammates learned to pass him the ball when he has his man pinned under the basket, he could avoid some of those 3 second calls and those numbers would drop even further, again both in terms of percentage and in terms of raw TOs per game.

 

My priorities are a bit different from tsherkin's though, in terms of what I'd like to see from Dwight. Improved passing would be nice, but I don't think it's as critical as some do. Part of the problem with Dwight's passing was the "Dwight and 4 people standing around at 3pt contest points 2, 3, 4, and 5", which allowed one person to cover the passing lane to the person at points 4 AND 5. Obviously, then, person at point 5 should cut hard to the basket to either blow past the defender OR take the defender away from the person at point 4, but for some reason we really didn't like doing that.

 

Point being, I think Dwight's post passing wasn't really "bad" like Jefferson's passing or Randolph's passing was bad. I think it was average, and made worse by the attention he got and the lack of motion in the offense away from the ball. Having cutters moving in and out would, IMO, go a long way to rectify that. Improved passing would help too, obviously, but I think having more off-the-ball motion would be more significant, unless Dwight somehow turns into Duncan as a passer.

 

I like the jumper as an idea, but I think it's more of A solution to part of his problem, not necessarily the only one. A big complaint I had with Dwight last year was that there was very little he could do when he first caught the ball. There was huge hesitation. A straight jumper that he can shoot immediately after catching the ball will keep his defender more honest, and help force help defenders to react more quickly, which opens passing lanes, but I think that jumper could've just as easily been a banking hook shot from 12 feet, a sky hook, or any of several other things. To me, the immediacy of the shot is more significant than the specific technique.

 

I think it's really interesting that, in the first interview I saw of Dwight in training camp, he answered "Defense" first when he was asked what he worked on in the off-season. I'd really like to see Dwight become the kind of dominant man defender he already is as a help defender.

 

More than anything though, I'd like to see Dwight start countering back off his Ewing move and go back the other way. I lost count of the number of times in the playoffs where he started on one block, did the Ewing move, went into paint, and when the defender(s) beat him to the spot he just shot over them. I kept screaming: "They know what spot you're going to Dwight. Pivot, spin back and there's NO ONE THERE."

 

That's the big one for me. Dwight has already developed the basis for several very effective post moves; he just needs to learn to counter off them to keep defenders from overplaying them, which is what Perkins was doing throughout the Celtics series.

 

A quick thought on the FTs: I got really frustrated with the Magic ignoring Dwight in the 4th quarter of games due to his FT% last season. Even if Dwight shoots 55% from the FT line, it's still more efficient for Dwight to shoot 2 FTs at 55% than it is for Orlando to do pretty much anything else offensively(seriously, do the math. 2 free throw attempts at 55% per possession is an Ortg of 110), but an improved FT% gives the Magic no excuse to not go to him late in games, which could only help the team's offense be more effective and more efficient. The loss of the Turk-o-flail will help that as well.

 

But tsherkin said that if Dwight shot 70% on FTs, the Magic would win the East. I'll go a step further: If Dwight shoots 70% from the line, the Magic have the best record in the league, and if he shoots 75% like he said he wanted to, he's a shoe-in for MVP. But, also like tsherkin, I'll believe it when I see it, though Dwight's improvement both in the playoffs and the stretch from January through March last year where he had monthly %s of .647, .634 and .619 respectively). But again: I'll believe 70% or 75% when I see it.