Q: I don't understand why the Hawks signed Dwight Howard. He's not really any better than Al Horford; couldn't they have just kept Al?
A: The Hawks had Al long enough to know how high their ceiling would be if they'd kept him. With Dwight, their median expected outcome may not have shifted that much, but their possible upside is much higher. Dwight Howard at his peak was arguably the 2nd-best player on the planet.
Q: Yeah, but his back injury has really slowed him down. He's not the player he used to be.
“My back hasn’t been an issue, and I don’t think I’ll ever have an issue out of my back for the rest of my career,” [Howard] said without pause.
I don’t have back issues. I had a back issue, but I had surgery and I’m fine. I haven’t had any trouble with it since. I’m good. I’m healthy.
If this is true, then having a 100% fully-healthy Dwight Howard on this team could make all the difference.
Q: OK, maybe it's true, maybe not. I'll believe it when I see it. But even if he's healthy, I just don't get how a player like Dwight Howard is really what the Hawks need right now.
A: Well for one thing, he addresses what was (by far) the Hawks' biggest weakness last season: rebounding. With Dwight,
the Hawks added a historically-great defensive rebounder. The NBA started keeping track of defensive rebounds at the start of the 1973-74 season. In the 43 seasons since then, the only player who has averaged more career defensive rebounds per game than Howard (9.2 defensive rebounds per game) is Dave Cowens (9.8).
According to Basketball Reference, Howard also ranks second in career defensive rebound percentage (29.13 percent) behind only Dennis Rodman (29.57 percent).
Q: All right, sure, we know Dwight is good at rebounding and rim protection. But what about his offense? Doesn't Coach Bud's system require guys who can shoot a lot of long jump shots?
A: Actually, according to Coach Bud himself, much of what we've seen up until now has been an attempt to make the most of the personnel he had, not necessarily his optimal system:
In a lot of ways we've adjusted to who we've had the first three years... In some ways [having Dwight at center] will be going back to what I know, and maybe even better and maybe even more comfortable with: having someone who can put that kind of pressure on the rim.
We've all come to believe that "Bud Ball" consists of five guys who can all shoot from the perimeter, but we might not even have seen what real Bud Ball looks like yet. More than likely, its final form will look more similar to what Stan Van Gundy was running in Orlando, or what the Spurs were running in the Robinson-Duncan era.
Q: Is Dwight still capable of having such a big offensive impact, though? Can he still dominate under the basket like he used to?
A: According to the stats, absolutely. Dwight shot 70% at the rim last year, good for 4th-best in the league (>3 attempts/game). Ironically, Al Horford was 2nd-best at 72%, but the difference between him and Dwight is that Al would only really attempt a shot at the rim when it was wide open, and would otherwise pop out for a long jumper -- whereas Dwight was taking it to the rim at every opportunity. And although Al's long jumpers weren't horribly inefficient at about 0.9 points per shot, they paled in comparison to the hyper-efficient 1.4 points per shot scored by Dwight at the rim. It's often said that scoring efficiently on dunks and layups is no big deal because they're such easy shots, but this misses the point -- it's the ability to get to the rim for those shots in the first place that's such a uniquely difficult skill. Dwight Howard, even in spite of his infamously reduced offensive role in Houston, managed to take ~60% more shots at the rim per game than Al Horford did (Dwight was #11 in FGA at the rim per game; Al was #77) -- and did so more efficiently than any other player in the NBA with that many attempts. Of all the players who scored more than 5 baskets per game, none had a higher FG% than Dwight. So at least when it comes to non-post-up possessions, it's fair to say that Dwight is still among the most dangerous scorers in the NBA. In the Hawks' offense, which revolves so heavily around pick-and-rolls and cuts to the basket, he should be more dangerous still.
Q: But isn't that the catch? Isn't Dwight's biggest problem the fact that he tries to force too many post-ups when he's just not that good at them?
A: Hawks fans should know better than anyone that when Dwight is getting the right looks, he can be extremely formidable in the low post. The problem in Houston and LA may simply have been that he wasn't getting the right looks. Both of those offenses involved a lot of one-on-one play in the half court -- so when Dwight would get the ball in the low post, it would be the kind of clunky, slow-paced play where he would take four or five dribbles and try to back his man down before making a move. This kind of play isn't especially efficient for anyone, even the best low-post scorers. But the Hawks take a different approach to post-ups, in which the big men run the floor and duck into the low post at the very beginning of the shot clock for a "quick hitter" (example 1, example 2, example 3). If they can't manage to establish an early seal in this way, then the half court offense reverts to the more pick-and-roll heavy attack we all know and love. But as Coach Bud explained in one of his Summer League interviews (I can't find the clip, but I think I'm paraphrasing correctly): as long as Dwight is willing to run the floor and work for those early post-ups, he'll get all he can eat on the block. Dwight himself says he is more than willing to embrace this approach -- in fact, his dissatisfaction in Houston largely seemed to stem from the fact that such an approach was absent there:
You run the floor, you sprint as hard as you can, you duck in, and still, you don't get the ball. It brings you down. It sucks the energy out of you.
But in Dwight's own words, the approach used by the Hawks and the Spurs is a lot more similar to what he was doing in Orlando that made him so successful there. Indeed, it's probably no coincidence that of the top 11 post-up players in the league (>100 possessions), five of them play for San Antonio and one of them (#4) is Paul Millsap. (Mike Scott was also in the top 10 if you include players with >35 possessions.) It seems more than likely that in this new post-up system, Dwight's elite efficiency at the rim will only improve. If everything goes according to plan, he'll be a happy camper, finally content on a team that empowers him to do what he does best. And with a star like that on the team, Hawks fans will no doubt be very happy as well.
Q: So... what's the upshot here? Are we looking at the return of Orlando Dwight?
A: Well, let's not get our hopes up too much. Orlando Dwight was so elite that it's hard to imagine any center in the the league reaching that level at the moment. But let's just say there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic. A lot of things will have to go right, but with a bit of luck I think Dwight might just surprise some people this season.
Submitted September 14, 2016 at 11:42AM by Buteo_jamaicensis