Has Dwight Howard's skills jumped the shark?

I.AM.PIFF

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Dwight was a freak athlete. His speed, quickness and explosiveness was on par with the NBA legends. That Orlando team he lead to the Finals was wack outside of his and he was a single handed defensive assassin. Still one of the better team defenders I've seen in decades in his prime under SVG.

I agree he was a dominant defender and certainly the one responsible for them being top 1-3 defense back then, but I wouldn't call the team wack. They could hit the 3 and offered tons of spacing for Dwight to do his thing :manny:
 

who_better_than_me

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Its a will thing. He gives up a lot of offensive re ounds and ten on the kffensive side he loses a lot of offensive boards.


Dude has the worst hands ever. I completely understood the stickum story. It was worth a try. He should wear receiver gloves. Balls richocet off his hand all the time. You see the missed dunks. Missed rebounds. Its a hassle even passing to him. Even josh smith get frustrated trying to pass to him
 

bubba scotch

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Even though I hate Dwights bytchassness for destroying my magic, even I can see the Rockets don't feed Dwight. Yes, he has lost a step but they refuse to play through him. Draymond mentioned this in the post game
 
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From the super man lay up and beyond, dude's always been overrated to me.


Only thing I respected about him was his defense.
 

desjardins

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nikkas must have forgot about that Magic finals run with Dwight. Dude was a monster scoring 30+ pts some nights, was a defensive rim protector, and in his mid 20s with the potential to improve his post moves. I remember the first analytics article I read that had nikkas like :ohhh: was the one about how nikkas couldn't score at the basket if Dwight was in a 5 ft radius of the rim.* The hype about dude was legit imo.
Then he went to LA, fukked his back up, let Kobe get into his head and ain't been the same since. :francis:


*Sloan paper about the Dwight Howard effect : http://www.sloansportsconference.co...of Interior Defense Analytics for the NBA.pdf
 
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