With Dwight Howard available, should Rockets move him?
TORONTO – All across the hotel conference room at NBA All-Star weekend on Friday, there were players who are nearing their uncertain free agency futures.
The Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kevin Durant topped the list, with local talent, the Toronto Raptors’ DeMar DeRozan, also part of that pack. But the likely free-agent-to-be who drew the most discussion, the one who will spark so much speculation leading up to the trade deadline on Thursday, wasn’t even there: the Houston Rockets’ Dwight Howard.
And that, in a way, was entirely fitting.
Amid the recent revelation that the Rockets are open to trading Howard, who is expected to opt out this summer and pursue a maximum-salary contract on the open market, his absence from the league’s annual All-Star extravaganza is certainly worth noting. The rival executives weighing his worth have to live in the moment, remembering that his resume’ – eight-time All-Star, three-time Defensive Player of the Year – is far less important at this point than the measured projections about what Howard has left in the tank.
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If he’s not good enough to be here, then what is he worth? The potential math on a Howard max deal is staggering, as he would earn approximately $31 million in the first season of a five-year contract and more than $40 million in the last.
Yet 12 seasons in, the 30-year-old who has been ravaged by injuries in recent years raises too many red flags for many teams (the New York Knicks, for what it’s worth, are believed to be one of those). And while it was just weeks ago that the Rockets were believed to be boldly pursuing a James Harden, Howard, and Durant trio this summer that would certainly be worthy of title contention, the confluence of factors has clearly reached a point where Houston general manager Daryl Morey isn’t as enthusiastic about that.
The 27-28 Rockets, who already fired coach Kevin McHale and replaced him with former assistant J.B. Bickerstaff after a 4-7 start, have lost six of their past eight games and fallen out of playoff position in the Western Conference. On the heels of their No. 2 seed in the 2015 postseason and a Conference Finals appearance against the eventual champion Golden State Warriors, it has been a shocking decline.
If there’s a silver lining here for Howard, it’s that he’s not the driving force behind the drama for once. The Rockets’ outbound inquiries with teams about a possible trade, coupled with the obvious reality that Houston’s three-point heavy system and the ball-dominant Harden are an imperfect fit for his talents, are to blame there.
There are those in the league who still see him as the old Dwight Howard, the guy who can do much more than this current production (14.6 points, 12 rebounds, 1.5 blocks per game) if only he had a more complementary roster around him. And there is no shortage of others, of course, who simply don’t agree.
All of which leaves the Rockets in quite the pinch, one that didn’t seem to be bothering Harden as he enjoyed his fourth visit to the All-Star stage.
“It’s out of my control, so I just focus on what I can control,” Harden said when asked about the reports on Howard’s future. “This weekend I’m having a good time, so I’m not really worried about that.”
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The ironic part, one that was perhaps telling as well, came later. When Harden was asked by CBS Sports’ Ken Berger about the power that superstars have with their respective teams in today’s NBA, he was quick to endorse the idea that their influence is well-earned.
“I think they should (have significant influence),” Harden said. “This is their team. This is the team they go out there and compete with, so they should have some kind of say so. Obviously it’s the owners and the general managers and those guys’ final decision, but some kind of input, I think, the star players should have. If you’re the star player and you go out there and try to lead that team every single night, I think that should be the case.”
So, I asked Harden, had he had a chance to discuss the Howard situation with Rockets general manager Daryl Morey? After all, Harden played a big part in recruiting Howard to Houston when he signed there three summers ago and makes up half of this 1-2 punch that had them all so optimistic about the years to come.
“No,” he said regarding Morey. “I haven’t had an opportunity. After the game (in Portland on Wednesday), we kind of just got on the plane and came to Toronto.”
If only Howard had played well enough to join him.