Houston Rockets: Does Dwight Howard Make Them Championship Contenders?

Is Dwight Howard the missing piece for the Houston Rockets? (Photo by Howard Cheng/Wikimedia Commons)

Last fall, the Houston Rockets took a major step towards contending for an NBA championship when they signed James Harden to a five-year deal after acquiring him in a trade from the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The NBA, however, has transitioned into an era where having one superstar simply has not been enough to win a championship. Going back to 2000, every team that has won the NBA championship has had at least two superstars they have been able to rely on, with the exception of the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, and it’s arguable that even they had two.

Thus, if the Rockets are to become legitimate champion contenders, history seems to dictate they will need one more major piece.

Dwight Howard might just be the answer.

In evaluating whether Howard makes the Rockets contenders for the title, let’s look at what he would bring on both sides of the ball.

Offense

Since he has come into the league, Dwight Howard has been one of the best pick-and-roll big men in the league. In 2009-10, he led the league in points per possession on pick-and-rolls, averaging 1.49 points per possession and in 2010-11, when this number dropped to 1.43, Howard still led the league.

This past season, despite playing through injuries and having a “down” season in regards to his overall numbers, Howard still averaged 1.29 points per possession in these offensive sets, and, according to Synergy, shot an unbelievable 80 percent on those plays. On 69 percent of the plays when Howard received the ball after rolling off of a pick, he scored.

Why does this matter for Houston? When Houston wasn’t running the court and looking for the open 3 in transition, they were 10th in the league in offensive sets where the post player got the ball off of a pick-and-roll and this number would have almost certainly been higher if Omer Asik’s hands weren’t made of cement blocks.

Running the P&R with Howard would also open up more opportunities for Houston’s plethora of 3-point shooters to have wide-open shots as defenders would be forced to collapse in the paint to prevent Howard from having an easy bucket.

Alongside Asik, Howard would make getting defensive rebounds a nightmare for opponents. Although he “only” averaged 12.4 rebounds last season, Howard has had multiple seasons where he has averaged at least 14 rebounds per game, including one season where he grabbed 3.5 offensive rebounds per game. With Houston’s affinity for shooting 3-pointers, it’s critical that they have someone down low who can get offensive boards and give them the opportunity for second-chance points. Last season, Houston averaged 11.1 offensive rebounds per game, which was good for 17th in the league, behind teams such as the Charlotte Bobcats.

Historically, Dwight has thrived in an offensive system similar to Houston’s. In 2009, when the Orlando Magic were in the NBA Finals, Orlando was second in the league in 3-point field goals attempted and Howard led the NBA in offensive rebounds per game with 4.3.

Houston was already one of the most effective shooting teams last season, according to Teamrankings.com, ranking fourth in the NBA with a team effective field-goal percentage[1] (eFG%) of 52.3, behind only Miami, San Antonio and the Los Angeles Clippers. With the Los Angeles Lakers, Howard was fourth in the NBA in individual effective field-goal percentage, with an eFG% of 58.

Essentially, Howard has the potential to turn the league’s most prolific scoring team into an unstoppable offensive juggernaut.

Defense

Even more important than the offensive upgrade Dwight Howard would bring to the Rockets is the defensive impact he would make on a team in desperate need of defensive help.

One of the best ways to negate the value of a high-octane offense is to give up more points than you score, something the Rockets were horrifically great at doing. This season’s statistics on ESPN.com show that the Rockets ranked 28th in the league in opponents points per game, surrendering 102.5 points per game. The only other teams to give up more points per game were the Charlotte Bobcats and the Sacramento Kings.

Looking at this statistic in more detail, the Rockets were at their worst, defensively, against pick-and-rolls and when post players had the ball down low, allowing 1.04 and .88 points per possession, respectively.

Specifically, Asik gave up an average of 0.85 points when defending against low-post players. Howard, on the other hand, only allowed 0.58 points per possession when his opponent posted up on him, and 0.76 points when his man was the recipient of a pass off of the pick-and-roll. Asik’s inability to guard big men was something opposing teams exploited, posting up on him 40.6 percent of the time.

One aspect of defense that is often discussed is the ability some players have to discourage teams from driving to the basket. In an article called “The Dwight Effect”, Kirk Goldsberry and Eric Weiss use data from the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons to empirically observe this effect.

According to their study, while Howard did not lead the league in blocks, he was the biggest deterrence down low. Their results show that, overall, when any other defender was within five feet of the basket, the NBA took 57.2 percent of its shots. However, when Dwight Howard was the defender that percentage dropped to 48.2 percent. This stands in stark contrast to Asik, whose opponents took shots within five feet of the basket 58.8 percent of the time, and made 51.2 percent of those shots when he was on the court.

What this means, essentially, is that the mere presence of Dwight Howard in the paint forced opponents to take mid-range jump shots, which are statistically the least productive shot in basketball, or avoid driving the rim completely.

Ultimately, the question as to whether or not Dwight can make a Houston a contender boils down to: Will the addition of Howard lead to more wins?

Advanced analytics show that Howard’s defense alone wins games for his team. From 2007-11, Howard averaged 7.2 defensive win shares. While this statistic entails a significant amount of detail, essentially what it means is that Howard’s defense won more than seven games.

According to Daniel Leroux of RealGM, only 10 other players have had four or more seasons where they averaged more than 6.4 defensive win shares. That list includes Hakeem Olajuwon, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Patrick Ewing, Tim Duncan, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell.

Howard’s decreased production this past season, combined with the bad taste his free agency left in the mouths of many, created a kind of sensationalism in the media that has led some to disregard the immense amount of talent he possesses. Dwight’s numbers this during his injury-riddled season do not reflect the kind of player that he has shown he can be and certainly do not indicate that his career as the most dominant center in the league is over.

Dave McMenanim of ESPN recently reported that Howard was quoted saying, “Looking back on it, I could have sat out the whole season until now and started playing now. … But I just felt like we had such a great opportunity and some of these guys’ window for winning is very small.”

Injuries are certainly something to take into account when considering the value of players, but at 27 years old, Dwight Howard is in the prime of his career and has proven that he is capable of turning Houston into championship contenders in the coming seasons.

[1] Defined by Basketball-Reference.com: the formula for eFG% is (FG + 0.5 * 3P) / FGA.  This statistic adjusts for the fact that a 3-point field goal is worth one more point than a 2-point field goal.