Easy Calls – ESPN.com ranks Dwight Howard as the Best Newcomer of the coming season. More interesting is that he also got 26 votes for Worst Newcomer. Also, in Chris Broussard’s Insider column on MVP candidates, Howard is on the short list of non-LeBron and non-dark-horse candidates for the award. He also offered this nugget of hope:
One Western Conference assistant coach expects Howard’s new surroundings in Houston to enable him to make a strong run at his first MVP. When Howard is having fun, he plays better, and last year in Los Angeles, he had no fun.
“I think Dwight will have a big year, just because he’s going to be emphasized more,” the coach said. “He’s going to be healthier, and he’s going to be happier. He hated playing in L.A. He was just getting by. So you’ll see a difference in him now.”
Harden Soul – So Robin Thicke thought he had the song of the summer all tied up in tidy little bag, and then JAMES HARDEN.
Yes, the song is on iTunes, and yes, I’ve just introduced you to your new ringtone. You’re welcome.
Experimentation – Via CBS Sports: Daryl Morey took to Reddit to answer questions last week, and the results were fascinating:
Coach McHale plans to experiment with Dwight at PF and Omer as C in training camp. If it works and helps us win, obviously we would look at using it.
That confirms what McHale has hinted at in the past and many have speculated about since Morey hasn’t indicated that Asik will be traded. CBS’s Matt Moore’s response to that quote was also provocative:
But on offense, it’s a monster, just based on trying to box out the two of them at once. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to peel out that lineup too often, due to the amount of stretch fours out there in the world.
Basically, Moore is saying the opposite of many fans who worry about the spacing with Asik and Howard on the floor. Instead, he implies that Howard would either be unwilling or unable to step out and guard stretch 4′s. Given Howard’s speed, length, and rigid adherence to defensive schemes (at least on Orlando), it’s hard to see how he wouldn’t be a superb defender at the PF position. Maybe I’m missing something.
Back to Morey’s comments–the GM summed up his pitch to Dwight this way:
1. You need multiple elite players to win titles and James Harden is an elite player. You will be on a contending team.
2. We have the most draft picks, free agency $$, and young players to improve the team going forward among the teams he was choosing from.
3. Coach McHale
Kevin McHale may or may not be a tactical genius as a coach, but during the courting process for Dwight, I thought a few times of this quote that appeared in a Grantland piece by Charles P. Pierce:
McHale had those deep eyes and the wide smile, and he was genuinely one of the funniest people who ever stepped on a court. (“If Kevin was from the block,” John Salley once told me, “Kevin would own the block,” and nobody ever mistook Salley for a Trappist.)
Mike D’Antoni may be one of the best basketball minds of the past decade, but as a recruiter, he just didn’t stand a chance. McHale’s weaknesses as a coach get discussed a lot, but I think his ability to make guys want to play for him is a strength (Kyle Lowry notwithstanding).
Finally, Morey is a big fan of Jeremy Lin:
It is amazing to me that all the time I encounter people feeling negative about Jeremy’s season with us. I have chalked this up to:
– he started off slow, mostly do to getting 100 percent back from injury
– very high, unrealistic expectations after his time in New York
– had a rough ending in the playoffs, again due to injury
– people generally remember starts & ends more than anything else
– people generally compare things to their expectations when forming opinions versus look at the big picture
Last year was Jeremy’s 1st full year in the league. Essentially his rookie year. If last season would have been his rookie year and he never would have played in New York, right now people would be appropriately talking about him incessantly as one of the top young rookie stars in the league. He was the starting point guard on a playoff team in West at age 24!!! Don’t get me started on this. Too late…
Morey makes a lot of great points, but talking about last season being Lin’s “rookie year” isn’t one of them. Rookie’s aren’t usually 24 years old, and point guards tend to peak early. If a true rookie had a season like Lin’s the expectation would be that he would improve into an All-Star. Once a point guard is 24, he has usually become about all he is going to be as a player. Chris Paul posted his highest PER at the age of 23; Deron Williams’ PER has been a rock of consistency since that age; Isiah Thomas had his best statistical season at 23; John Stockton hit his stride at the ripe old age of 25, thanks to the arrival and development of Karl Malone. The best hope for Lin is that he peaks like Gary Payton. After an unremarkable rookie season, Payton had a PER of around 17 for two seasons before making the leap to over-20 PER territory when he was 26, and maintaining that level of production for most of his career (Steve Nash was also a late-bloomer, but is probably not a good example because he is widely recognized as an outlier).
Still, it’s notable that he talks about Lin recovering from injury at the start of the year–a point that seldom comes up when discussing Lin’s improvement as the season went on.
One last note about evaluating Lin for the coming season: PER heavily favors guards with a high usage rate, which Lin is unlikely to have playing next to Harden and Howard next year. Stats like Assist-to-Turnover Ratio, True Shooting percentage and Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus may give a better picture of how well he fills his role.
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