Dwight Howard is kicking butt

NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

The return of James, your basketball author. Now the good and the bad. The good is that my most excellent boss and coworkers filled in quite nicely and that is most appreciated.

The bad is that James is diagnosed with Cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. This will go on for 6 months and may limit my blogging at time to time. Fear not, they say the cancer is one that is curable, so let us move forward with our dreams of basketball!

Dwight Howard is already a Superstar.

The man can jump.

Dwight jumped straight out of High School into the NBA drafted number 1 by the Orlando Magic.

The man can jump.

Dwight has a 40 inch vertical leap.

NBA Dwight Howard factoid - On 15 November 2005, in a home game at against the Charlotte Bobcats, Howard scored 21 points and 20 rebounds, becoming the youngest player ever to score 20 or more points and 20 or more rebounds. source
He jumps like a pogo stick and rebounds like a demon.

Carlos Arroyo’s off-balance shot banged hard off the rim, hung in the air for a moment then … disappeared. In the half-second it took the ball to carom, Dwight Howard had pogo-sticked through a pack of Seattle SuperSonics, snatched the rebound with his giant right paw and, in the same swift, violent motion, mercilessly flushed it back through the rim.

The fans sprinkled throughout KeyArena gasped. The Sonics’ shoulders slumped. They weren’t going to win this battle with Howard, and they knew it. source

At 6′ 11″ and 270 pounds and awesome leaping ability all that was lacking was a team around him. So, the Magic put a team around him this year.

Van Gundy’s hiring has been especially beneficial. In addition to significantly upgrading the Magic’s defense – “They’re defending way better than in the past,” said one scout – Van Gundy made the decision essentially to use Lewis as a power forward, allowing Orlando also to get Hedo Turkoglu, another 6-foot-10 playmaker, on the floor at the same time. Much like the successful offensive system the San Antonio Spurs built around Tim Duncan, the Magic now have Howard surrounded by four shooters who can spread the floor.

Now before we crown Howard MVP there are some areas to be worked on. One such area is shooting. Dwight even addressed that this summer by hiring a shooting coach.

The inevitable comparisons to Tim Duncan have already begun.

“They want to keep saying he’s the best big man in the league,” Carlesimo said. “He’s not the best big man; he’s the best young big man, and he may be the best center in the league.

“Until they bury Tim Duncan, (Howard) isn’t going to be the best big man in the league.”

Still, even the Spurs marveled just one week earlier when Howard, in the words of one team official, “kicked Tim’s ass” for much of the first half of Orlando’s loss in San Antonio. One Western Conference scout said Howard reminds him of Karl Malone “in terms of sheer strength and dominance.”

Kicking Tim’s butt?

High praise indeed!

NBA Basketball Fan Question Would you trade your center for Dwight Howard?

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