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What's Dwight Howard's ceiling?
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Location: Blogs The Sports Blog |
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| Posted by: Gregory Broome |
11/29/2007 8:54 PM |
Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard said in this Yahoo! column that he's reached just "ten percent" of his potential.
While that's a fun possibility to think about, I'm going to go ahead and say that it's not exactly true. Howard is currently averaging 23.5 points and 14.5 rebounds a game. That's beastly. And he's only 21. But a comparison to the best of the current bigs, a level Howard is certainly headed to, reveals that his numbers aren't that absurd. Of course, points and rebounds are the simplest and most basic measures of a big man's value, but they're also the most effective.
Shaquille O'Neal averaged 29.3 points and 13.2 rebounds in 1992-93, when he was 21. He surpassed those numbers just once in his storied career, and by the narrowest of margins, averaging 29.7 and 13.6 in 1999-2000.
Maybe it's more appropriate to compare Howard to a true peer, a guy who made the prep-to-pro jump like Howard. To that end, Kevin Garnett averaged 18.5 points and 9.6 rebounds in 1997-98. His career went on a steady climb from that point - he averaged 20.8 and 10.4 the following year, and 22.9 and 11.8 a year later. That represented a plateau, albeit with a spike to 24.2 and 13.9 in his MVP season of 2003-04, that he's still on as a member of the Celtics.
Then there's Tim Duncan. The Spurs big man famously stayed four years at Wake Forest, so he was 21 in his rookie year. He averaged 21.1 and 11.9 that year. Remarkably, he didn't add a whole lot to those numbers, peaking at 25.5 and 12.7 at the age of 25, then falling back towards 20 and 10 from that point on.
To me, Howard falls somewhere in between. He's got the ridiculous body of the young O'Neal, the learning curve of the young Garnett and the team-first mentality of the young Duncan. So while 10 percent is an extremely low estimate, I'd argue that it'd be fair to say, based on the above, that Howard has reached 85-90 percent of his potential with his performance this season. So at his peak, Howard could be putting up 27 points and 16 rebounds per game. If that happens, it's hard not to see Orlando competing for a championship. If it really is 10 percent, it's hard to see them losing any. |
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