Dwight Howard at PF

[CanYouDigIt]

Listen...

Dwight is gonna play 30-35 minutes. The 13-18 minutes he isnt playing Asik will...plus...some of the time Dwight is in as well. We are talking about 5-10 minutes a night likely broken up in short bursts of several possessions many f which will end in Harden or Parsons taking a three in transition anyway.

If you wish to make it out to be some new idea or...unusual tactic...or something that is gonna make them a success or failure...fine.

I dont mindl Its at least real basketball discussion.

But ive been watching basketball too long to worry about what we call Dwight Howards position when hes gonna do the exact same thing either way.

The precious spacing will suffer, guards will be taking uncomfortable pullup jumpers on the other end, and 90% of the game will go on exactly as it would if it never happened.

Id Darko didnt fail to live up to expectations Dwight is probably a 4 his entire career with people making topics on if 6'9'' Dwight would have been as good as a center.

Im all for offseason time wasting though so feel free to continue.

SHUT THE **** UP [COLOR="Red"]KBLAZE[/COLOR]

[rezznor]

How many teams of any kind have won recently?

What kind of question is that?

One team wins a year. Those teams usually win more than once with that core. Spurs, heat, Lakers, Bulls, Rockets....

The titles are won by very small groups of teams.

Asking if something works...is not the same as asking who won a ring doing it lately.






Seems it does.

Basketball is complicated in ways but not so much as people want to pretend in discussions like this.

Dwight playing the 4 will cause nothing of note to happen. Not like hes not done it before. It is a non issue. Its a non issue no matter who the 5 next to him is.

That doesnt mean im saying dont talk about it. I dont care what anyone is interested in. What im saying is....

Darius Miles played point for the cavs
Barkley was a small forward in Philly
Shane Battier is a power forward now
Anthony Mason was a pointguard on the Knicks for a while
Shaq and Dennis Rodman played next to eachother and they had the best stretch of that season

Positions dont matter. Especially at the 4-5. Spacing is just a hot term on places like this these days. All about the spacing.

This shit will not matter. Its like people saying Lebron cant defend bigmen. Only he does...so what does it matter what anyone thinks he can do?

Dwight plays the 4. Has plenty of times. Im talking...for years. N omatter how they decide to go...he and Asik will play together.

At those times....NOTHING of note will happen.

Even if they start together the Rockets have shooters to spare. Some of them the type to play the 4. I liked Motiejunas when I watched them. Parsons is 6'9'' and will at some point be at the 4 no matter what anyone thinks makes sense. basketball games are too fluid to worry about shit like this.

How their lineup looks for 4 minutes before it changes just isnt that big a deal. Especially when its not exactly breaking new ground. Two bigmen who dont shoot?

Not exactly putting Dwight at the 2 and just seeing how it goes.

Its standard basketball.

Nothing newsworthy.

i trust kblaze's knowledge of basketball over 99% of the posters here

[bmd]

If Asik and Greg Smith can play at the same time, I see no reason why Dwight and Asik can't...

[SCdac]

i trust kblaze's knowledge of basketball over 99% of the posters here

I trust that he's been watching basketball for a long time, and no doubt he drops some serious gems in terms of knowledge here and there (and his videos are exceptional and backed with good tunes)... but I don't trust anybody who's become really jaded and/or thinks they know everything by virtue of being a certain age or merely watching the game a long time. Often times it's the older folks who are in love with their own opinion. Kblaze clearly comes to the defense of Dwight often, while often criticizing Malone, so even he has strong biases and it's clear as day. Point is... I take everybody's comments with a grain of salt.

[Kblaze8855]

22 minutes into the season Asik and Dwight will play togther....nothing worth reporting will happen....they will be up 8 when it starts and 9 when one of them sits and we will all stop caring about this bullshit that has happened 700 times a season for 60 years.

Not all teams have a bigman who can shoot.

Basketball was not designed to need one. No coach worth a damn cant work around it. Asik is gonna be on the block fooling nobody into thinking hes gonna get the ball Dwight and Lin/harden will be in a pick and roll and basketball will be played as it has been for ages. And on the other end they will have one of the best interior defenses in the league.

For 3 minute bursts.....two-three times a week.

Just like when the Bulls won plenty of games with Tyrus Thomas and Ben Wallace on the floor together. And neither of them are 20ppg scorers and they didnt have a 27ppg swingman to play off and a high powered offense in place.

This "not working" is just them winning 51 games instead of 54 and not winning the titles they probably wont win anyway.

You dont have an NBA coaching staff attempting to put it in place because its a laughable concept that doesnt make any sense to try.

I suspect Kevin Mchale knows a thing or two about bigmen and how to keep them out of each others way for a few plays at a time.

Its hardly figuring out how to work with stone hands Mutombo and Tyrone Hill who would forget how to hit his baseline jumper for weeks at a time.

Its a few minutes shared on top of the 15 or so Asik plays with Dwight sitting.

It just isnt gonna be that major either way.

[Kblaze8855]

but I don't trust anybody who's become really jaded and/or thinks they know everything by virtue of being a certain age or merely watching the game a long time.

I dont think I know all. I think I know more than most on most basketball issues because I care to investigate them.

If I seem jaded it probably is because ive heard too many "That wont work!" claims about things that on reflection were dumb to question to begin with.

Ive heard "Can a scoring champion win the title? and "Can a team that takes a lot of threes really win in the playoffs" and on and on.

I was on ISH reading dumb arguments about how guys like Peja and Rashard
Lewis would be the best non bigs the league and AI and Kobe wouldnt be able to maintain elite status once zones were allowed.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand...the golden age of swingmen quickly followed and Kobe and AI had 30ppg seasons before they even removed handchecking.

Always someone asking "Will this work?

or questioning how some great player is gonna cope with some percieved hardship. And every time...its a non story in retrospect.

When I see laughing emoticons in posts acting like a team that is likely to be great wont work....because of two very good bigs on the floor together for 190 seconds at a time...

Cant help but think back to decades of bullshit arguments over nothing.

People making things out to be more of a problem than they are like a topic on Rose having too loose a handle to beat NBa players off the dribble. Or reading about Lebrons broken mechanics likely having him out of the league in three years when ISH was watching him in the summer leaagues.

Its always....every time...a lot of talk about nothing. Barring injury or the impossible to predict most teams that should be good...are good.

The Rockets will be good. How good? We will see. But they are a good team even if Asik cant shoot and Howard cant either and they end up getting time together.

The rest is just more "This will never work" talk that almost always ends up being a lot of talk about a non issue.

They will play together a bit, the Rockets will probably win like 53 games, or 58 if they gel quickly, they will get knocked out by the clippers and this topic may get bumped with a "So what happened kblaze?!?!?!" because the Clippers have a 4 with range in Blake...who just uses it to miss jumpers the other team loves to see him take....so it doesnt spread the floor too well anyway.

Then next year Nash will be rumored to join the Nets and I can hear the 2014 version of the "Kidd and Parker in one backcourt? Lol. Pop is an IDIOT" topics I heard when the spurs were after him and people wanted to know how basketball works with 2 natural points in at once. As if they had not seen it 400 times.

I dont know if im jaded. But ive gotten a little tired of "How can that work?" topics when ive seen power forwards at the point, 2 guards play the 4, an average team beat 67 win team playing 2 points and 3 swingmen, and the pistons own teams with a lineup of 7 seven footers getting out of the paint for a 60% shooting 6'4'' small forward to operate on the block.

The game just isnt that rigid. The idea that anything cant work is just laughable to me. At least anything as often seen as....2 non shooting bigs getting a few minutes together.

There is no rule requiring conformity. And while I always appreciate a real basketball topic...

I just feel like a little more non conforming is needed to be asking "Can this work". Not that thats the question you asked. But it seems many are of the opinion that it cant. and I just dont get it.

And the moment the rockets win by 22 with Dwight and asik together forcing bad shots over the top of them as the other team fails to make a run to cut it close....its gonna be obvious that it was odd to question in the first place.

[SCdac]

I knew some long winded posts pertaining to the subject were coming from kblaze. Perdictable. But not unwanted. Everyone appreciattes knowledge but nobody appreciates douchish attitude especially from a "moderator". Just a shame you have to fish for them, criticize, or call him out to take a topic seriously. I'm at Dennys now eating a french toast slam so ill respond in a bit.

[Kblaze8855]

Ive been using the same "douchish attitude" since 2001 and it doesnt seem many people care. Maybe the few who take it more serious than its intended.

And I was at a place called Midnight Diner in Charlotte after leaving a strip club on friday. Great french toast. Ive not been to Dennys very often.

I remember a whole "Dennys hates black people" thing from the 90s and I guess I never got into them. Not because they hated black people. I know a lot of people hate black people but I buy their products. It just wasnt the place to eat when I was forming my late night meal loyalties.

[Graviton]

Dennys is the nastiest. shittiest restaurant chain in USA. Everything is either undercooked, overcooked or plain disgusting. Their food tastes like it's 2 months past expiration date. My local Dennys is always empty and looks/smells like the most depressing place in the city. Only time I ate there I felt like throwing up and burning the place down. Just cook at home, ANYTHING is better than their garbage.

[SCdac]

Denny's blows. I go more for proximity and convenience. And there's not many places open 24/7. I know the chick who's worked right now's shift, because she's been working it for years, and out of hundreds of waitresses she's hands down the best I ever had. The french toast is usually fine (an edible corporate take on what french toast should be) but tonight is was not even cooked fully (isolated incident I'm sure). some new cook apparently, who was also the manager? is that common? whatever. They were cool about it. there's other options in a city as big (and fat) as san antonio, about a thousand taquerias, but yea cooking at home is the way to go.

[SCdac]

22 minutes into the season Asik and Dwight will play togther....nothing worth reporting will happen....they will be up 8 when it starts and 9 when one of them sits and we will all stop caring about this bullshit that has happened 700 times a season for 60 years.

So basically, because the game will go on, it doesn't matter. Any kind of fluctuation in game play is meaningless because it's going to happen anyways? I'm not going under the assumption they'll be up 8 because who really knows. The stacked Lakers of last season should be a caution to assuming a team will be amazing. And Kobe is arguably as good as Harden last season. And the West is still relatively tough.

Not all teams have a bigman who can shoot.

And not all teams have what it takes to be in the upper echelon of any given season, for all kinds of reasons some of which may or may not be the production and cohesiveness of their bigs. But I fail to see how some teams being incomplete, or rather, unconventional in today's game means it's automatically a nonissue merely because it's happened before. Nobody's denied nearly every unconventional lineup has happened before (recently, I think back to GS Warriors assortment of small lineups in the past decade)

Basketball was not designed to need one. No coach worth a damn cant work around it. Asik is gonna be on the block fooling nobody into thinking hes gonna get the ball Dwight and Lin/harden will be in a pick and roll and basketball will be played as it has been for ages. And on the other end they will have one of the best interior defenses in the league.

Seems like you're glossing over any potential negatives while only recognizing positives (best interior d). You see it as a non-issue, I see it as a potential barrier to becoming elite. If we're talking origins, basketball was designed a long time ago, well before either of us were born, and no matter how many similarities remain it was alot different in say 1906. The kind of front court it takes to "go all the way" (that's what we're talking about) may not be static and at the same time may not have changed totally... There's no guarantee or foregone conclusion about the upcoming season's results. Unless your statement is "basketball will be played no matter what", which is obviously true... but the question is "will the Rockets be a great team (ie. not playoff fodder) using a ______ lineup for a significant portion of the game?" ... Completely valid question, however much you don't think so.

Just like when the Bulls won plenty of games with Tyrus Thomas and Ben Wallace on the floor together. And neither of them are 20ppg scorers and they didnt have a 27ppg swingman to play off and a high powered offense in place.

The Bulls eventually acquired Boozer, which I think was smart however defensively flawed he is, and in Thomas' tenure the Bulls were never an elite team and were some times bad. They're not an example of something that worked at the highest level, for reasons that may be a direct correlation to Tyrus/Wallace or not. It's obviously not "all the front court's fault" but I still don't see anything terribly impressive about a never-quite-got-it-together Thomas and an older Ben Wallace pairing. Give me Sheed-Wallace all day. There's lineups with bigs who didn't have range that have won before, but most of the most recent top teams have had some semblance of diversity in their front court.

This "not working" is just them winning 51 games instead of 54 and not winning the titles they probably wont win anyway.

You dont have an NBA coaching staff attempting to put it in place because its a laughable concept that doesnt make any sense to try.

I suspect Kevin Mchale knows a thing or two about bigmen and how to keep them out of each others way for a few plays at a time.

I suspect he does too, but that's why he called it an experiment. We don't know. It's not certain. Not all 50-win teams are worth talking about but some are. Alot of that (who's worth talking about) is because the make up of the roster, the way they play, coaching, individual talent, and other stuff. Meaning, the Rocket's record and results is entirely dependent on what they do on the court. In saying that, how their best players (who've never played together) mesh is relevant. If you're saying that because the Rockets won't even win a championship anyways it doesn't matter, that's cool, but there's more to the topic than that imo.

Its hardly figuring out how to work with stone hands Mutombo and Tyrone Hill who would forget how to hit his baseline jumper for weeks at a time.

Its a few minutes shared on top of the 15 or so Asik plays with Dwight sitting.

It just isnt gonna be that major either way.

Well, we don't really know. That's the whole point of a open question, gathering opinions, etc.

Questions were asked, legitimately, if Howard and Gortat can coexist on offense, like in this article (below) from 09 talking about different lineups for the Magic, when Van Gundy was reluctant to play them together. McHale doesn't have that choice I'm sure. None the less, Gortat became vocal in not willing to stay a back up. And Asik seems to have done quite a bit of posturing himself. Howard and Asik are more or less going to be forced to play together (or Asik will be traded), which may turn out excellently or may not. Nobody knows.

http://www.orlandopinstripedpost.com...ard-and-marcin

[SCdac]

I dont think I know all. I think I know more than most on most basketball issues because I care to investigate them.

If I seem jaded it probably is because ive heard too many "That wont work!" claims about things that on reflection were dumb to question to begin with.

Ive heard "Can a scoring champion win the title? and "Can a team that takes a lot of threes really win in the playoffs" and on and on.

I was on ISH reading dumb arguments about how guys like Peja and Rashard
Lewis would be the best non bigs the league and AI and Kobe wouldnt be able to maintain elite status once zones were allowed.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand...the golden age of swingmen quickly followed and Kobe and AI had 30ppg seasons before they even removed handchecking.

Always someone asking "Will this work?

or questioning how some great player is gonna cope with some percieved hardship. And every time...its a non story in retrospect.

When I see laughing emoticons in posts acting like a team that is likely to be great wont work....because of two very good bigs on the floor together for 190 seconds at a time...

Cant help but think back to decades of bullshit arguments over nothing.

People making things out to be more of a problem than they are like a topic on Rose having too loose a handle to beat NBa players off the dribble. Or reading about Lebrons broken mechanics likely having him out of the league in three years when ISH was watching him in the summer leaagues.

Its always....every time...a lot of talk about nothing. Barring injury or the impossible to predict most teams that should be good...are good.

The Rockets will be good. How good? We will see. But they are a good team even if Asik cant shoot and Howard cant either and they end up getting time together.

The rest is just more "This will never work" talk that almost always ends up being a lot of talk about a non issue.

They will play together a bit, the Rockets will probably win like 53 games, or 58 if they gel quickly, they will get knocked out by the clippers and this topic may get bumped with a "So what happened kblaze?!?!?!" because the Clippers have a 4 with range in Blake...who just uses it to miss jumpers the other team loves to see him take....so it doesnt spread the floor too well anyway.

Then next year Nash will be rumored to join the Nets and I can hear the 2014 version of the "Kidd and Parker in one backcourt? Lol. Pop is an IDIOT" topics I heard when the spurs were after him and people wanted to know how basketball works with 2 natural points in at once. As if they had not seen it 400 times.

I dont know if im jaded. But ive gotten a little tired of "How can that work?" topics when ive seen power forwards at the point, 2 guards play the 4, an average team beat 67 win team playing 2 points and 3 swingmen, and the pistons own teams with a lineup of 7 seven footers getting out of the paint for a 60% shooting 6'4'' small forward to operate on the block.

you seem cool but going on about past slights and grievances as some relevance to a single thread asking simply "how do you think the "experiment" will turn out (McHale's quote)?" which is about as open ended and non conclusive as it gets .... is the very definition of jaded. Listen to yourself. If you're "tired of..." and "always hearing" this or that, and it's been happening for decades, that's on you, because it's not going to change. I don't really care to dissect this, I'd rather stick to basketball discussion, but at least give a topic a chance before your developed cynicism jumps out. As a jew, I'll tell you now, that's much easier said than done.

None the less, your prediction for the Rockets is 53-58 wins, which is fair and essentially what I have them at as well. 55 wins, second round exit (roughly) But I don't consider them contenders, much in ways like I didn't think the Phoenix Suns or Golden State Warriors of the mid-2000s were contenders. Or the mid 2000's Rockets for that matter. How much Howard can/is willing to improve his range makes all the difference imo because I think he's been, for somebody of his talent, too guardable the last 5 years. He's not a great playmaker, and some confidence at the FT line would help keep teams (literally) off his back. One can say he's been missing a superstar alongside him, but I don't think it's that... Let me ask you this, as their roster currently stands, what do you think it will take for the Rockets to win a championship and how much will the offensive cohesiveness and production matter if they do win it?

[chips93]

Howard and Asik isn't going to work. Can't think of a single team in the league that starts two similar players next to each other, and certainly no successful teams.

The people comparing these two guys to Pau and Bynum are crazy. Neither of these guys is even close to Pau in regards to midrange shooting and passing.

I really, really hope the Rockets do try and play Howard and Asik together, because that just improves my Warriors playoff position.

denver played farried and koufos together

valanciunas and amir johnson in toronto

both made it work by just having 3 very talented perimeter players.



id agree it will be an issue for the rockets this year though.

[DCL]

if you put dwight at the 4, then you need a 5 who can shoot pretty well to bring some spacing back. but if the 5 is on the outer perimeter and the 4 is in the paint, then the 5 is basically the power forward and the 4 is the center, so it doesn't really work because dwight would be playing the same way. dwight, with his skill sets, can only play one position in today's nba. you can't force to make him versatile. he can't even make a wide open 10 footer.

[Kblaze8855]

I think the main issue I have is decades of people acting like somewhat unusual lineups wont work before....they work fine. I just dont get how anyone is still perplexed especially at something as basic as 2 non shooting bigmen. Feels like after all we have seen result in great teams that something so normal as that shouldnt even be worth asking about.

Which again...doesnt mean I hate the question. I'll discuss anything about basketball. I just dont know how longtime fans have not seen too much to still think the game so rigid.

My countless "Well what about when...." things may not make a point you care for but there are just too many.

I remember people telling me I was an idiot to believe the suns could still win with a small forward at the 5 in Boris Diaw. Then they win like 54 games with no Amare and Diaw is handing out back to back triple doubles, guarding Yao, and playing point center.

I just wonder where the imagination went.

These are not hard things to picture working.

I just dont get how anyone is so sure it wont that they make "Lol....NEVER work!" posts with all the laughing emoticons.

It really just makes me wonder how short memories are.

We had a team make the finals with its best lineup being 2 pointguards(one of them the worst shooter at the point ive ever seen), a short 2 guard at the 3, and two people who cant catch a ball and average 7ppg aside from putbacks.

I remember the sonics and knicks running full court presses forcing centers to bring the ball up at times. I remember getting a laugh out of I think Vlade Divac hustling up the floor with the ball going coast to coast when someone on the Lakers got trapped in the backcourt. Vlade ran the floor like a guard stepped around a guy and made the layup.

Perhaps ive seen too much ball. A thousand situations flood my mind in these things and I just cant believe im the only one. This game has too many variations for me to think a team with contending talent wont contend because of a small wrinkle in normal lineups for 7-8 minutes.

I kinda wanna see this team play someone like the Bucks or new Pistons and let Dwight and asik play heavy minutes together.

Josh Smith is gonna miss 11 uncontested jumpers as the crowd chants "Noooooooo!", Jennings will go 5-26, and ill have a good laugh no matter who wins.


I want to see teams drive on the Rockets. Might have to see the floater make a comeback.