Dwight Howard hasn’t played poorly — he’s averaging 17.2 points a game on 53.6 percent shooting, plus he’s pulling down 13.9 rebounds a game and impacting the defensive end of the floor. The Rockets are off to a good 8-4 start.
But Hakeem Olajuwon is watching from half a world away — he is in Nigeria right now working on launch of “Power Forward,” a youth program involving the NBA that will use basketball to develop health and life skills in the children there.
And Olajuwon sees a lot of missed opportunities, he told Fran Blinebury of NBA.com.“Dwight has always been athletic and aggressive and he still is. But when I watch him, what I see are opportunities that he is missing. When he gets the ball, he seems to be taking his time to decide what move to make, where he should go.
“There should not be a delay for Dwight. He must be able to make a faster recognition of the situations and react immediately with a go-to move. You must move right away before the defense has a chance to set up. You must be the one making the first move so that you can force the defender to always be the one reacting.
“I thought we were doing a good job with this when we were working together over the summer and at the start of training camp. But what I see now is that when Dwight gets in competition, he has a tendency to go back to all of his old habits. He’s just doing all of the things that he did before. He needs a reminder.”
That pause has been a long running habit of Howard’s (and Blake Griffin and other bigs), when he gets the ball in the post he wants to see what the defense does then start his move. It’s easy to see that and say he is being patient in the post, which certainly is a good thing.
But moving quickly and keeping the defense off-balance is a better thing.
For now Howard is on his own, Olajuwon said he plans to return to Houston in February. And Howard will continue to put up numbers as he is clearly healthier than he was a year ago. But there are other levels for Howard to reach if he and the Rockets want to hoist up Larry O’Brien.
