21st century peaks Ep 3 | A+ defenders with unique (but flawed) offense

[MUSIC] >> Thinking basketball podcast, my name is Ben. Welcome back to another episode. It is episode three of our 21st century series on the best peaks. That is the best individual player seasons of the 21st century. If you miss the first two episodes, there's a lot of preamble and spiel in our introductory episode. We get into the criteria. We don't have time for that today because we are on the crazy train talking about, really, I think some foundational big men that need to be discussed today. We just have to jump into it. I mean, we're going to talk about Drain on Green and we're going to talk about Dwight Howard. These are the two players we're going to discuss. And Cody, do you have any thoughts before we dive in? >> Well, first of all, I actually think that we really restrained ourselves in the first two episodes. I think relative to us, there was some fat cutting of the spiels. I think we've done much worse in the past. Number two, I'm really excited about today because I think, I think I'm just putting it out there right now. I have a feeling that the Drain on Green selection in the top 25 might be the most controversial topic we bring up in this entire series. I'm really interested to see what people have to say about it. But I know I have a lot of ground to cover with him. So I just want to say that I'm excited probably the most about that conversation today. >> Good. Let's have it. >> Yeah. >> Because I agree. I think he's an extremely polarizing player. There are people who don't even think he's good, which is strangely just one of the weirdest takes. And but also when I was thinking about that, I was like so much of internet basketball culture is just people hating every player. LeBron James isn't good. So what are we really doing? Why should we give any lip service to these silly internet memes from people who just come up, like think about let's just start with Drain on. Because we're going to extend what we talked about with Jason Kid last time quite a bit. We called him Pocket Drain on and that was certainly setting up the direction we were going with Drain on. And I think there are a number of hugely important key ideas to why Drain on Green is or was so good at his peak. And I'm really thinking about the 2016 season. He had an intersection where he was developing as a player in the NBA from 2014 into the 2015 championship season into the 2016 record setting win season. And as he's maturing and developing and sort of taking off, the league is also starting to go through its transformation of the pace and space revolution that we've talked so much about. And so every year, the league gets smarter and faster and more spread out and more modern. That is going to chip away at the advantage that Golden State was able to create by playing the way they played. And specifically, it's going to chip away a little bit at the relative value of players like Steph Curry and Drain on Green. And it's super critical with Drain on because he came along and was able to play a small ball five role that we're going to get into. We have some stats later that even 10 years later, they blow my mind. Like I'm going to give these stats to you, Cody, and you're not even going to understand what I'm telling you literally will not understand your exact response will be that doesn't make any sense, Ben, followed by hysterical laughter. That is what we're talking about. And Drain on sitting at the center of that both offensively and defensively is really critical to the whole thing. So there's like a ton of big, big large philosophical topics for us to pack into our pipe and smoke today. I think that's actually the point, the diverging point we should start with here is where do we go to be go with this offense or his defense because when I think about Drain on Green, I go back to like the 2014 season. I think I think David Lee is starting over him at that point, very traditional 2010 kind of post score slowdown, get it down to him. Very nice player. Like David Lee is a nice little post up guy that I enjoy. But then Drain on Green, it's the starting spot in 2015. You start seeing like why he should have been starting, but it's not until 2016 where it really feels like his offense more than anything is unlocked. And I think that's maybe, I think people appreciate his defense, Ben, I don't know if people appreciate quite what he did offensively for this team. So I don't know about you, but I think it might be more interesting to start with the offense of end of the ball. I agree with you. I want to start with offense. Although much like kid, there is a connective element between the defense and the offense. And specifically in Drain on case, the lineups that you can unlock and play. And we're going to talk about that. I have a fun thought experiment I want to ask you about with that. But yes, this is we want to dive into the offense because so much of the genuine reflecting that you get from people Cody when you say, Hey, Drain on Green has one of the best peaks, peaks of the 21st century. Did he finish fifth in MVP this season that we're talking about in 2016? I mean, that was another one that always blows me away. It's like, this is not from left field. This was someone who is clearly a star level player. And if you are questioning his offense, then I assume you think Rudy Go Bears is like terrible and probably shouldn't even be on an NBA team because Drain on Green is clearly a much better offensive player than Rudy Go Bears. But I even think of, and that's why I want to go back to some of the things we talked about with kid last time. Kid is a better offensive player than Drain on. But I even think of someone like Ray John Rondo who some, you know, I have my problems with his lack of shooting and some of the other things. But this is a guy who certain, certain people in the basketball community are like, I have, you don't even know about playoff, you don't even know about playoff Rondo. Like he was like a borderline superstar. It's like, but Drain on Green is clearly like 11 times better as a defensive player than Ray John Rondo. And then offensively, how can you look at Rosh on Rondo and think that he's that much better than Drain on Green. And specifically in 2016, there was a little luck, but you have a center or a power forward, a stretch big way ahead of the league and then he's stepping out and shooting threes and it goes back to the kid conversation, not a great shooter, but when you can make 34, 36% of your threes and play that position and change the dynamic of that position, that is a spacing ad and a weapon that all of a sudden makes you a little bit better than your isolation bag than your post up game. You're not going to post up Drain on Green. Like that he's not going to face up and take you off the dribble and things like that. He is a player who's going to space. He is a player who is going to push the pace in transition, much like kid. He is a great passer. And we need to talk about what that all means. And finally, because of the combination of the pace and the passing, he is a revolutionary unicorn in the short role, pick and roll at a time when the league needed the short role, pick and rolls. It was starting to space out more than anything else. And of course, he's one of the great short role players of all time despite not having much of a bag and despite frankly for a big man, not being a great rim finisher. So that's that's where we're going. You say those things, but I actually want to go back to a particular game, 2016 game 7, Oklahoma City Thunder, tight game, like everyone starts and no one, no one wants anything to do it the ball. It seems like everyone is scared. You know who's not scared Ben? It's the same thing we talked about with Jason kid, Drain on Green. Like you say, oh, you're not going to be doing those sets. They have an empty ISO possession for him on Durant, Turner on fade away, buries it. He gets Westbrook on one on one, post up, spin it on the baseline, throws it down. So this is a guy that like sure wants to know why I can do that. You can call him to do that. Yes. Very, very great while, but I think the point is is when the chips are down, right? And you're like, we need somebody to do anything is like, yeah, I got this. I'm probably the best score out here in this instance. And I think being able to do that in even like those small spaces is super valuable. But I think beyond the scoring, let's put that aside because that's not where he's getting all that. Can I just interject before you're next point? Absolutely. I love how you pick game seven against Oklahoma City and not game seven of the NBA finals in 2016, where he scored like 35 points. And was the games leading score. I mean, that's one of the great factoids in basketball history, like this classic game where the calves come back and upset the 73 one warriors and Dremons out there. Like give me the give me the rock. I'm going to hit five, three is I'm going to do whatever it takes. Today, I just happened to pull up 2016 game four against the Houston Rockets. It's a two one series. The game is in Houston. Jeff Curry hits a wet spot and sprains his MCL. It's like a tie game at halftime. Dremon comes out of the second half, Cody. The dude hit three straight movement, catch and shoot threes. He was just like, nah, it's time for me to score. And they blow Houston out of the gym and you take that kind of stuff for granted because hey, it's a two one series. They went on to win in five, but just as easily you could remove an MVP. And as we'll get into with some of the data, I think this is exactly why you're talking about a player who he has a footprint on offense. You can feel him on offense at times, even if he's not a great offensive player. Okay. So what you just said there, the movement threes, I bring up like the empty fade away things like that, right? So then you're like, wait a second, what's the difference between somebody like that and Let's say somebody. like Westbrook where after a while like all right maybe we reduce some of these shots because I never I never felt that with Dremond there's not too many times you're like maybe you shouldn't be shooting too many times here. He has just top tier discernment on the basketball court just knowing when to push the to push what he's supposed to be doing out there when he needs to move the ball when he needs to be taking that shot and you can see that he passes up a fair amount of three point shots because he can see the the rest of the players moving around and he knows that something else is going to develop and I think you see that mostly with the split cuts that the Warriors run right you get the immense gravity of clay tops and you get the immense gravity of Steph Kru you get the incredible cutting and athleticism of Andre Guadala and all of a sudden there's just the smallest the smallest moment where defenders looking the wrong way and he sees that there's going to be an opening out of the basket. Bam it's a lamp and he could have taken the shot two seconds ago and it would have been a solid enough shot based on like how he can take some of those open threes but just that patience and awareness of how everything is to develop on the court just creates these layup and open shot opportunities for his teammates. Yeah, absolutely. I mean the passing is such an interesting element. We talked about it with kid last time and how valuable you can be as a passer without being a top tier score and Dremon has some of that to his game as well and it's the type of thing that as we've said I don't think if you put him on a team with no good players offensively he can really move the needle on offense. That's just not how a non high scoring offensive player functions. You can't just carry a team and do heavy lifting with passing like that but the better the talent gets it's almost like he has an inverted shaped value curve like the better the players around him the more valuable these skills that he has become and especially in 2016 because they were rare skills. It's rare to have your power forward or your center grab and go and push pace and and look like a point guard. I mean it was a couple years later and he fluctuated with his conditioning once Kevin Durant got there but in 2019 in the playoffs when he was back in good shape they played Portland. There's a couple games in Portland. I mean the dude look like magic Johnson. He's he had like you know 18 14 13. He's just grabbing rebounds and flying down the court and running the transition and the passing specifically is really interesting to dissect because the highest value real estate on the basketball court is the rim. It's always been the case and will probably always be the case and when the three point revolution started and really with Steph Curry you had this idea that like okay you can match the value of the real estate at the rim out on the three point arc and so now we have two pressure points we have the interior and we have the three point line and before that before before that ever happened you had all these great mid-range players Michael Jordan Kobe Bryant, Hakim Alajewan etc etc who were like well if I can't get to the rim I kind of have like a secondary like a poor man's option right and that's how you generate a good offense and offense is back then you know they what what did they put up 105 points per 100 possession 110 a really good offense was 115 and now the teams have become much more efficient unlocking the three along with the two. Well what does that mean for someone like Dremont Green? It means that when Dremont Green is on the court and you look at the effect of his passing Golden State scores more they're more effective scoring at the basket and here's the big one they're way more effective scoring from behind the three point line like if we look at all the players in this series and we look at the difference when they sat on the bench versus when they were on the court over a large sample Dremont to me stands out maybe more than anyone else unlocking players like Curry unlocking players like Clay Thompson because of the passing and so he's not the one providing that direct scoring pressure himself as a shooter and he's not the one providing the direct scoring pressure himself as a penetrator or post-up player but he's in a sense dissecting and slicing apart the defense to find these high value options and you said it use the word discernment I mean the decision making in the passing are absolutely elite so he's a point guard playing center or power forward and I'll give you the center numbers in a second and that's the value it's diming up and unlocking these guys in a way where like when he goes to the bench it's kind of crazy Cody if you look at these numbers when he goes to the bench 2015 in 2016 Golden State the percentage of shots that came from three when he was on the floor increased by 10% and their three point efficiency on those shots increased uh sorry the increased by 13% to even higher so so that's just crazy and then they were more effective on the shots that they took there about three to four percent higher the 2016 Warriors shot 44% from three when Jury Montgomery was on the court and to me that's just the function of this this point guard passing vision thing that he has so that that's where I start uh and almost finish on offense with him and when you say the the passing part I think you even said a little bit earlier you said always a great passer that almost doesn't quite explain how good of a passer or he is like if you I think you can make the argument that if you put together tears of the best passers in this century right top tier like number one you have the you have guys like LeBron James Coley-Yokich Luca Dongej um Huma for else I think Dremont Green has a really good case for the second tier right like anyone else you put in there I think you'd be hard pressed to be like yeah those guys are definitively better than Dremont because you look at it from a couple of different ways number one you talk about the half court you see the delay action we love talking about our delay action Ben Big Man up top all kinds of offense running around um I'm not sure how many Big Man Big Man ever I would want running delay more than Dremont like the brilliance and light like I said before seeing the subtle cuts knowing when somebody's gonna be open over here knowing when to do some kind of keeper action where he's gonna dive to the basket and then all of a sudden it's a lob to one of the bigs down there or another spray out or something like that the finishing that's another question he's not a great finisher but the passing uh in itself is incredible but then like you say the magic Johnson comp the grab and go just going downhill it's the same kind of thing with Jason Kitt he's always looking for those little openings those little pockets between the defenders so he can get somebody streaking out there and again you have guys like Steph Curry and Clay Thompson that break the idea of a of a transition play because they can spot up behind the three point arc and it's a great uh play and he knows when to find those guys there um but you combine both elements of the half court and the transition and he has as full of a passing packages you're gonna see uh outside of like the top passing guys ever so I said there is a crazy stat that I think reflects sort of how ahead of the league they were back in especially 2016 um and I think it has to do with implicit in what we're saying is the ball handling right he can grab and go and he's a very good ball handler for a big man and has that speed it can move places all over the court so okay um 2015 2016 that this just blows my mind in nearly 700 minutes in those two regular seasons with Dremond Green playing center this is not the death lineup mind you this is just when Dremond Green plays center with anyone so you put Dremond Green at center golden state would you like to take a guess of what their net rating was I mean what is that center yes wait is this this is just 2015 2015 and 2016 before Dremond gets there this is when Dremond Green's playing center in the regular season what was golden states net rating I mean it has to be an insane but I can't go to insane so I'm gonna say I'm gonna say an insane number with like plus 14 it's plus 21 plus 21 would you like to guess their offensive rating and I would like to remind everyone that the league average offensive rating during these two seasons was about 106 would you like to guess their offensive rating when Dremond Green played center all right well if there's 21 net runs let's say it's like a 118 it's 126 oh my god it doesn't make sense I told everyone you was gonna say it doesn't even make sense Ben I told you this moment it's nearly a plus 20 relative offensive rating that's exactly when Dremond Green is playing at set not the death lineup again just when he's at center just when he's at center good one and I to me that is a reflection of everything that we just talked about and then the next natural question is like well isn't isn't he a function of the system then isn't he a this is the criticism against him isn't he a kind of role player a deluxe role player on offense who's only able to do this because of the other players around him and there is of course some truth to that because if you took Dremond Green's onoff numbers at face value like in 2015 in 2016 just his raw onoff numbers the warriors were 12 points better on offense per 100 when he was on the court right but yes a lot of that is something like playing alongside a lot of your minutes alongside Steph Curry who we may or may not talk about later in this series it's to be to be determined let's calm down with the spoiler sorry I got out of control I'm all excited about this Dremond conversation I got out over my skis there let me let me let me rain it back in Cody please do so this this is the I think next layer of the conversation that you have to have with Dremont. All these things at face value or even he's finishing fifth, you know, top five in MVP or whatever it is, I do think there is a context specific boost to being in that environment with those guys that help him with these skills. But at the same time, if you try to isolate, if you try to say like, well, let's remove Curry from the equation. Let's look at the lineups without Curry. He still looks good. Does he look insane? Does he look like he should win the MVP? Of course not. That's why he's not in the top 10 in this series because we haven't gotten to his defense. He may literally be the best defensive player of the century. But offensively, it's this tradeoff of like, what does it mean? How valuable can you actually be to not really help a bunch of other guys, but really fit on higher level teams, really fit next to players who can shoot specifically, really fit next to point guards who you can screen for and play these two man games. I mean, you talked about his delay. I think his basketball IQ in the two-man game and understanding where to screen, where to go, when to slip in the short role. Like you said it, you're going to get him the ball and then he's going to understand where is the lob, where is the kick out? When am I going to flip a screen, re-screen, when am I going to keep it and hand off? One of my favorite games that involves that was 2019 game six, the second half to close out the Houston series. I think it was in the fourth quarter. They ran the same play on the far side of the court, like six straight times. Just Dremon feeling off of Curry and which way he was going to go, keeper, pitch, handoff, and they're just completely, sorry, Houston people. There's a theme with these guys. I don't think you can get that without his speed, without his IQ. That translates to high level playoff basketball is my point. There's some middle ground to find there with his offense where no, just because he's not a big scorer. Doesn't mean he's a terrible offensive player. But yes, the raw numbers that you see sometimes associated with Clay Thompson, especially Steph Curry because he played so many minutes with him and this golden state team that exploded and revolutionized basketball. They of course are not the true value representation of his offense and we know that because we've seen him without those guys and he's still pretty good, but he doesn't look like a superstar, so where's that middle ground? Ben, the issue of the whole system conversation where it's like, oh, you're the system player. You want to work the system doesn't exist without him, right? Like he's a system within the system that he's like the progenitor of, right? Like you can't do it with anyone else. Like I love Pascal Ciacum, right? Bam and a bio has the kind of passive and defensive chops that I think a lot of people would put up there with him and whatever else. You can't insert like guys like that and make this all work. Like what Dremon has, the passing, the discernment, the reads, the chemistry is developed with these guys happens because of his brilliance on the basketball court. Now I was thinking, I was even like, when I was thinking about what his superpower would be and I don't know if this is going to be a little early, you might even revisit this a little bit later, but one of the superpowers I was thinking of is, maybe he's just psychic, right? Like maybe he just knows everything that's on the court, but I think that I think that's more for you Cody. That's psychic basketball. He's psychic. He just knows everything that's going to happen on the court a second before it's going to happen. Like you know, it's actually not fair to him that downplays the actual brilliance and the work that he puts into it all. So I scrapped that idea. So when we talk about his superpower, I'm not actually going to say he's psychic, but I'm just saying that he's brilliant beyond what a lot of these other guys that we think are very good bring to the table. Yeah, we should state for posterity that he's never more than like a 13 to 15 point score points, 75 possessions around average efficiency. Sometimes he can improve. I mean, in the playoffs, he has some series. I mentioned the Houston series. There was the Portland series. There are times where you're going to see him, especially in 2016, get above, you know, 15, 16. He can flirt with that in the second round against Houston, in second round against Portland in 2016. He averaged 20 points per 75 on really good efficiency. So you get these little blips, but it's like not quite as good as Jason kids scoring that we talked about last time. Jason kid had a better combination of like on ball finishing, posting up small guards, going, you know, when players go under screens, shooting shots from the outside. So what does that mean? I mean, kids going to be another rung down from players that we hit in this series that are in the mid 20s. I mean, Dwight Howard, where we're going to go in a second is more like at that level. And then we have the great scores that are up near 30. So there's almost like four levels. What does it mean when you're down at one of these levels? I mean, again, for me, I think it comes back to being smart, playing at a high level. No one's really taking away his value in the playoffs. If anything, when you get in these high level situations, he sometimes becomes more valuable. I mean, his numbers and his six games in the 2016 NBA final 16 points per 75 plus 9% true shooting. We talked about the huge game seven that buoyed those numbers. And I like to isolate him from Curry statistically to try to get an idea of like what this means. Is this is just a Steph Curry thing? Is it the pairing there? Can you decouple it from 2015 to 2019? He still has a plus six on off in all the minutes without Steph Curry. So the Warriors outscore people in those minutes. In 2015 and 16, the period that I'm really focused on, this is just this is the craziest number. Do you know what the Warriors net rating was when Steph Curry was on the bench and Dremont Green was in the game? In 15 and 16. So the ranch in 16. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No. Yeah. Seven hundred minutes again. We got these seven hundred minutes. I would be impressed. Feels like plus four. Plus eight. Okay. It's plus eight. So a little noise obviously it's only seven hundred minutes or whatever, but you saw it in the playoffs. Like Curry would miss stretches in the playoffs against weaker opponents and they would still just walk right through them. And in fact, some of the plus minus numbers for Dremont and the playoffs are very good. Does he look like a superstar? No, but you can isolate if we take Curry out of the equation and we look at the first ten years of Dremont Green's playoff career. He has a plus nine on off, which is the numbers we were talking about with the superstars in the honorable mention episode and in the last episode with the first two players we talked about. He still looks like the other players or even better in these plus minus type stats, even if you remove Steph Curry from the entire equation. So to me, that's evidence that again, the passing unlocks the three point shooting. Depending on who he's playing with, it helps Golden State be better at the rim. We'll revisit that concept later, but there were times when he's helping with his passing, penetrating, pushing the pace and transition. And then you add whatever value that is on offense to a defensive player of the year to the best playoff defensive player of his generation. And I think maybe only Anthony Davis could even give him a real tough argument for that. That turns out to be a really, really valuable NBA player, especially in 2016. And I think where people would get hung up with this is they think about the number one option. And it's like, all right, who are the best number one options? And Dremont Green is probably not a top 25 of the century number one option. He's not a number two option. Yeah, he's not even number two option, but if we're talking about like a third option, we're talking about a fourth option, Ben. He's probably the gap between him and whoever is second is so enormous. Like he probably outpaces anyone else that we'll talk about in that particular role. And that is the value add that you want to jump in. Well, because it's not just this is where we get hung up with our thinking and we think like, we've got to have a number one option, man, I got to make a meme and put it on the internet. We're going to have no, this is the two way thing. This is the lineup constructing thing that allows you to cheat. It's the fact that he's a number three or number four option. That's the fact that he's a point guard playing center. That's what's key because then that allows you to put more offensive players around him. So there's some latent inherent lineup value because of this two way thing where your defense is so good, you put more better, you put better offensive players on the court and the defense still doesn't fall apart because Dremont Green's so good because he's so versatile as a defender. And I think if I had to pick a superpower for him, it would be his speed and brain. That combination playing center, it's just, it's just nuts when you watch it. He's everywhere. He covers so much ground. He gets to the corners. He comes back to the paint and he does this while being just about as aware as any defender in the 21st century of threats. And you said the psychic thing as a joke, but I mean, his anticipatory powers are off the charts. He does have a spidey sense as a defender. And I think that combination, we're just like Jason Kidd. There's an interplay with the lineups and who's he's like one of the original grab and go guys. I mean, magic Johnson, I think is the original king. But there's so many games you pull up these playoffs in 16, maybe 15. and 17 and a little things start to change when they got the roster and Kevin Durant gets there. But God, when he's on, the grab and goes defensive, he had one defensive possession I was watching in that game today where he flies all over the place to defend a pick and roll, shows out on James Harden, recovers back to the ball, contests the ball, turns and gets the rebound, grabs the rebound, dribbles it, past everybody down the court, no look, woo, lay up pass on the break. And that is the thing to get that from your center that's more important than a traditional number, my number two option is 24 points per game, you know that kind of thing. - The speed really is the thing that shocks you and you go back to watch because we all know that Dremond is a brilliant defender and you can watch him now and he still pops up and think he's conversations, but he is not nearly, nearly as quick as he used to be. It really kind of blows your mind when you see it and defensively, I also go back to that 2016 Thunder series, Garding Ibokka, right? And Ibokka can space the floor. He's like, I got this shooting threes. Dremond's just sitting in the paint, right? Like Ibokka's weak side, Dremond's in the paint, just like dictating stuff that happens because even if they skip, even if they swing, he just materializes. Back to Ibokka completely nullifies it. There's even one play where there's some kind of action going up at the top, you can see a point great communicator again, also. - I'm a little communicator. - I'm real. - He screaming at clay, he's like, switch. Get to Ibokka, get to Ibokka, clay doesn't get the memo for some reason, so it's kind of a hesitation. Ibokka gets an open three, but Dremond after the miscelled communication, still flies out and gets a good contest. So he's like, well, I guess I'll just continue doing it all. - Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he has that gear. I took note of it, there's a play at the very end of the 2019 finals against the Raptors, where the warriors are down by a little bit, like four at the end of the game and they're doing the intentional foul. And Dremond's like, I think we need a steal here. And he just goes and gets a jump ball or a steal. That's what led to the Steph Curry. That's what allowed them to come back and get the Steph Curry three to potentially tire when the game that was the last play of the finals. And then he did it in game five, after they hit the back to back threes or three threes or whatever to swing game five, I don't know if you remember, he blocked the three in the corner, like how did he do that? I don't know how he did that. He blocked the game, the potential series winning three in the corner. So he does that kind of stuff all the time. Here's my big thought experiment with Dremond Green Cody. And it gets back to him being a system player and a role player. I looked at the lineups of the top eight or nine other teams in the National Basketball Association in 2016. And I said, what have you took Dremond Green and made him the power forward? I tried to be charitable and not like juice the team. It's just like, what if you made him the power forward or center like the other big on this team for the other eight or nine teams? And I believe I sent you those rosters, right? So you are familiar with, okay. And the big takeaway for me is that if you take Dremond off Golden State, so they lose that ability to play that line up with him at the five. They lose that ability to have a all time level defender making them a great playoff defense. They lose that ability to, yes, he's not going to kill you with his scoring, but he will puncture defenses with his passing and his speed and especially spraying to the perimeter and accessing backdoor cutters into the paint to help increase basket pressure that way. When you lose that, I think most of the other teams whoever gets Dremond becomes the favorite or a favorite to win the NBA title. And if that's not the footprint of a superstar player, I don't know what we're doing. I don't know what is a superstar player anymore if we're like, well, if Portland got that guy, they'd probably be a content, like we could pick one or two of the lineups if you want just to demonstrate it. But it was an astounding thought experiment for me to go through and realize like, actually not if this team had Dremond Green, they'd be ridiculous. Yeah. And I think that at the end of the day, that should be the main thought experiment people go through is like when you go through different team constructions, when you have different contexts and things like that. Who do you want on your team? And the fact is, at us peak, Dremond Green is a guy that no matter how, like if you were to build some kind of super team based on whoever's in the league at that time, Dremond Green is going to find his way into any lineup that you were going to construct. And that in itself should be telling that this is somebody that has, I don't know, it's tough because you can say he's not a superstar, but he's a guy that's going to have superstar level impact, basically on any of these teams that he's juicing out there. Yeah. I mean, just for fun one, the 2016 spurs would be Tony Parker, Danny Green, Kauai Leonard, Dremond Green, Lamarca's Aldridge with Borussia, Owen Manu, Genobili coming off the bench. I mean, that team won 67 games anyway. Then there's some that are a little bit more on the line, but you're still like, OK, the Toronto Raptors, Kyle Lowry, Demar DeRosen, you have a scoring problem there. But Demarri Carroll, Dremond Green, then Dremond Green, what he does to the defense, Jonas Valentunis was the center on that team. I mean, there's just so many-- and that was one of the ones that we thought wouldn't be one of the final contenders of our Oklahoma City derand when you get to go play with derand and Russell Westbrook and Stephen Adams and guys like, I mean, yeah. Can I bring up something that he does defensively that I don't know if I've ever seen anyone do? There's actually two things defensively. He does better than anyone I've ever seen. Maybe you'll bring up someone and be like, actually, I don't know, Bob Cunningham was pretty tremendous at doing this back in the-- Whatever. Two things. Cunningham? You mean Billy Cunningham? What is happening? Hey, I was trying to run through all defenders I could in my head. What's his nickname? Is he like, can I name a man? Can I name a man? Yeah, yeah. I knew I had-- That was a right-- The B word I had to go on there. Two things he does. Number one, he plays chicken with drivers. So when the guy is driving to the basket, he steps up and he almost baits it. He's like, I dare you to throw the lob above me or to try and get a pass underneath me. I'm going to step up too far and it's going to entice you. And it looks like the mistake. It's like, why are you going up too far? And invariably, the offensive player is going to be like, yep, I'm going to get this-- I'm going to feather this bastard. Nope. Dre von Green knew it was coming, going to get the steal. And guess what? He gets the steal sprinting down the court. Nothing you can do about it. There's going to be a basket on that. The other thing he does well is the flying backwards contest. Yeah. We did a whole video on that. Yeah. Oh, did you? Oh, yeah. Way back a couple of years ago. Absolutely. Well, for anyone that hasn't seen the video, what he does is especially it's an intransition when people are moving at very high speeds. He jumps backwards, hands up in the air, backwards. So he's like floating backwards with the offensive player that's about to shoot. So he's not actually making contact, but he's still like, draped over them like some kind of demonic shadow that's preventing them from getting the basket. Those two things have never seen anyone do either of those two things better than Dre von Green. OK, so Dre von Green is a defensive player of the year, maybe all-time level, all-century level defender, just ridiculous in the playoff defensively. And there's some question about how good is his offense, is his blah, or not that good on weak teams. It starts to get valuable. How valuable does it get on good teams, depending on the synergy? So this is the concept. Now, look at Dwight Howard. Dwight Howard is a defensive player of the year, perennial candidate, maybe all-century level defender. We'll talk about it a little bit more depth in a second. And then on offense, oh, Cody, I brought up my box score earlier in Dwight Howard, juicy box score. That guy, I mean, what are we talking about here with Dwight Howard? I said it. We're talking about someone who scores a little bit more. Dre von's never going to push past like 15 to 17 points, per 75, but Dwight Howard, he gets in the 20s. In fact, Dwight Howard, if we just jump to his lone star scoring, that's a concept you'll hear throughout this series. You've heard me talk about when I say lone star, I'm removing the other high load offensive, high usage, offensive players from the court and saying, what happens when we ask this guy to do all the heavy lifting? Dwight Howard right here, I mean, this is beautiful, Cody. 2010 and 2011, without your guy, Richard Lewis, without Jamir Nelson, Dwight's out there by himself. What's he do? 25 points per 75, plus 8%. True shooting, the man is an 11 time defensive player of the year. He can jump 13 feet in the air. He's like, Superman, I mean, that's got to be way better than Dre. That's probably better than anyone we'll talk about in this series, right? Wow, you're setting me up for failure here. I don't know which direction to take that because I will say, because I have to insert this kind of analysis in here. The Superman dunk contest with Dwight Howard in it was some of the most fun I've had watching the dunk contest in my life. He brought a good flair and pizzazz to it. And I know people are going to be credit, he didn't actually dunk them all like through, I don't care. That was sick. I loved that incredible theatrics. So yeah, Ben, I think it's an open to showcase as the best player of the century. No, I'm saying I'm juxtaposing that the way this one player looks in the box score and the way he's traditionally received by a lot of people in the basketball community. It's like, ah, he's not even that good. Even though he keeps winning championships. And every time he's on the court, his team's way better. And he's like incredible defensively. But I don't care about that stuff. He doesn't have a crossover. But Dwight Howard, who also doesn't really have a crossover and can't wait. What's this? I'm just looking at my notes here. Can't really dribble the ball too well and can't really pass too well. But he has these huge sexy stats. And so he's always second in MVP, fourth in MVP, fourth in MVP. I think there was one in 2011 when you had the whole thing where LeBron went to Miami and nobody wanted to vote for LeBron and nobody wanted to vote for Dwight and Wade and you couldn't vote for Kobe Bryant at that point and Derek Rose wins the MVP. I mean, I was out there writing little blogs on the internet like maybe Dwight Howard should be the MVP and that actually is a key component to the Dwight Howard conversation because when you look at Dwight Howard, we'll get into, I know you'll get into the passing. I know you'll get into the style of this defense compared to what we just described with Dremon, but he's a great defender. There was an ethereal quality to what the heck was going on with Dwight Howard as this was happening in real time. In one direction, you're going, man, Orlando keeps winning 60 games. Maybe Dwight Howard should be the MVP of the entire National Basketball Association. The stats are amazing. He blocks all these shots, etc, etc. On the other hand, especially in the playoffs, some of his plus minus numbers were you're just like, wait a second, how can they be that good without Dwight Howard? It jumped down to me in 2010, I believe, where they played the Charlotte Bobcats in the play, is that right? The Charlotte Bobcats made the playoffs. Yes, they played the Charlotte Bobcats in the playoffs. Dwight Howard, the dude averaged like six points a game in the series and they just completely steamrolled Charlotte. They did not need him to probably even score a single basket. They didn't need their quote unquote best player to score probably a single basket in that entire series to steam roll through a playoff series. Then you start to get into the things with plus minus as I mentioned. There's a mystery all around. On one hand, there's a superficial mystery of how is Dwight Howard so good? Howard's making the team so good. On the other hand, there's this thing where his plus minus number, you're like, wait, was Dwight Howard really? Did he do that? He didn't need to score? What's actually happening? I'm going to stop there. How do you feel about that? I mean, I definitely bumped against the plus minus stuff because I think actually if you wrap in the three year postseason data from 2009 to 2011, I think overall, the match are actually better when he's on the bench in the playoffs. That is a shocking number. When you're looking through all of these numbers at the top 25 guys, that is something that just sends alarm bells to you. I think I'm pretty sure he's made the playoff 12 times in his career. I think he's only had a positive on/off twice in his playoff career. Just in a single playoff run. It's kind of like a repetitive thing. Yes. This is something that happens time and time. That's shocking to me. When you watch the tape and I feel like what can kind of be dangerous with plus minus stuff sometimes. You see those kinds of numbers and then you go in with that certain length. So I'm watching and I'm like, I'm going to figure out every reason why Dwight Howard is bleeding value for this particular team. Of course, I come up with a bunch of things. Well, I don't do that. He doesn't do that. He's not very hungry and defensively here. But then you kind of like back up for a second and you watch, you're like, man, this guy is also really, really good at some of the things that he does. It's unbelievably good and it feels undeniable that the offense just runs better than defense runs better when he's clicking and they're kind of doing their thing. So I think when we enter this conversation, that's the like massive push pull that were dealing with massive push. I'm talking like Dwight Howard bench press push pull on this one. I have an answer to both of those mysteries. Okay. It is the same answer. Both mysteries to me have the same answer. But before we get to that answer, I don't want to skip over the shape of Dwight Howard the player. I don't think we've ever done really any detailed film stuff on him. I don't think we've ever made a video on him. And so I think it's really important to set the stage. Again, we have the box score stats. We have the plus minus stats. But he is almost antithetical to the type of big man Dremon Green was. He is from the era before. He is trying to play the old school big man role, but he's also doing it in kind of like a way that we're familiar with now. Because when you watch Dwight, the first guy that should come to mind offensively is Shaq. Because that's Dwight off ball. That's Dwight's just roll into the basket, sealing defenders. And he's like, I am 8,000 times stronger than everyone in the NBA that switched onto me. You either have to foul him or he's looking for a catch and a big finish down inside. And the only other modern player to really live and feed and play like that is Shaq. O'Neal. So there's a little bit of this baby Shaq thing. I know they had the both more Superman and Shaq was always trashing Dwight on TV. Although Shaq was who didn't Shaq trash on TV. Trash is most people on TV. That'll think about it. That's probably not good. But there was that relationship between them. But frankly, there's this element of their game that jumps out. Massive offensive rebounding. Massive rim pressure from their strength and athleticism. And just a ton of Dwight's offense is what I would describe and I did with Shaq and his greatest peaks off ball offense. He's looking to get a catch and a seal inside against weaker players. And that's why you get like crazy efficiency with him. Much like Shaq he couldn't shoot free throws very well. He drew more fouls than like anybody. He's in the all time leaders and fouls drawn per possession and free throw attempts per possession. Sometimes you just had to hold you put the whole team in the penalty by himself. So he's playing this almost like rim rolling archetype that we now have today where you can access them for lobs. You can access them on the roll. But you could not access them on the short roll. Give it to him early and have him pass. You could not access them on the short roll. Give it to him early and have him hit like a little jumper. And by the time we get to peak Dwight here, it was a talking point quite a bit during that era that he had no post game. He had a little bit of a post game. He liked the same three moves over and over again, which meant smarter defenders like, you run into a smarter defender who knew your game or who was strong. Kendrick Perkins of the Celtics gave him problems simply because Dwight could not bully him under the basket because he was big. So I think that's really important before I give you my theory of why Dwight's numbers were so confusing and why there was this mysterious quality about like, is he the best player in the league or also what's going on is he super overrated. I think the answer is the same person. I'll give that hint. I think the same person is the answer to both questions, but I wanted to establish like, this is how he played. This is what we're talking about. I'm genuinely very interested now, but I want to add some color to the post up thing because it's you say the same three posts and moves. I also think it's in the same spot on the court, right? Like if he got it like on the side in the short corner, something like that, he really like to go to like the baseline spin, hopefully going to throw it down, right? Because I think if he was on the baseline, there wasn't actually like any other kind of post move he used because what he wanted to try and do when he rolled, he almost always went to seal about eight feet in the paint, like directly in front of the basket. And when he got the turning right hook shot going, it looks pretty nice. Like there's a couple of stretches in the playoffs where you can see him just like hit three or four of these in a row and you're like, well, there's literally nothing that the defense can do because he's just kind of shouldering into the guy for you also said the shape of Dwight Howard. And he talked about his side delts for the rest of this entire episode. Like what kind of angle he used on the side raises, but that'll be another day. But you know, he tried the left handed hook once and a half from there and it hit once and a half at the right hand was a lot more efficient. At the end of the day, I was like, he feels kind of like supercharged, Tyson Chandler, who you can also dump it down to on a seal and get some like solid hooks once in a while. Oh, I don't think that's right. Okay. Tell me why because I think you're talking about Shaq. I think you're talking when he's on the court, the entire defense is like completely preoccupied with what the hell Dwight Howard's doing in the paint because once he gets in the paint with space, he's devastating. You cannot let him get a defender on your back. And this is still the era where teams teams are starting to know to front the post more, but it's not a standard thing. And it was a big problem if he switched on to a smaller player. He just put him in the basket. So I don't think you can make a comparison to someone like Tyson Chandler because Tyson Chandler essentially never played like that. But you do have great efficiency. You do have run running and you do have incredible offensive rebounding because of that interior position. And I think we should be anchoring more toward a centerpiece like Shaq. Now why is there such a divide? Like what is the divide between Shaq, one of the great offensive players ever and Dwight? First of all, Dwight's actual center like post game, if you give him the ball with a player on his back, I think his legs and bounds behind just just leagues and bounds behind Shaq, O'Neal. Secondly, Dwight Howard can't pass. So all the stuff we've said about passing so far in this series, the inverse applies to Dwight, which makes him a very interesting kind of rigid player where we talked about what you know, Jason Tatum's brown belt and everything. So his ranges are kind of narrow, but Dwight Howard's like really extreme and his positives. And I mean, he can't really dribble. And when I say he can't pass Cody, what do you think the best pass he's ever made is? I was. legitimately tried to uncover this while I was watching and there, there's just aren't, there aren't a lot of options, but there aren't a lot of options. He, he, he will draw defenders. And he understands how to make basic kickouts. Stan Van Gundy once said, like, you know, Dwight was very coachable. You would tell him concepts and he would get them. So he understood like after a while, okay, when I feel a double, I got to look for a guy here. I got to look for a guy here. And when you watch the magic offense in the playoffs, they do get tons of inside out offense or shots created by Dwight postups even. But it's not that diverse. And it can't handle a lot of different coverages. So the series to me that really jumps out is 2010. They run into the Celtics. And they're run into the Celtics and the Celtics have not just Kevin Garnett, but Tom Thibodeau, Kendrick Perkins is super strong and matches up with him well because of that. And then because of Thibodeau and Garnett and that scheme and the veteran nature of that team playing on the cutting edge defensively at that point in time, they really figured out how to be like, okay, yeah, we're just not going to get carved up and give up a ton of shots to the quote unquote Dwight Howard offense. And I talking about the passing, somebody just brought in another player that in the chat, somebody brought up a player that I'm going to bring up right now to give some color to the assists and passing aspect of Dwight's game. If you look all time of every player that averaged fewer than two assists the game and greater than three turnovers a game, Dwight has the second most of those seasons ever. All right, he's done that eight times fewer than two assists the game fewer than two. Okay, yeah, fewer than two greater than three turnovers per game. All right, he has eight total seasons like that. The only other player that has more is Moses Malone who did it 11 times. Now, there's only four guys ever that did this more than five total times and the other two guys are allons of mourning and Patrick Ewing. So like in general, that's okay company. Like you look at those five four guys, you're like, you know what? Yeah, they have their passing woes, their turnover happy, whatever else, but they still have some solid impact numbers. Like they're still able to go out there. And I think that's the key part of Dwight Howard here is contrasting them with Jason Tatum. All right, is that you have such different skills, right? The the ability to draw fouls is like God dear Ben. God dear, between 2009 and 2011 in the postseason, if you look at all players, it's great. All players have played at least 200 minutes per game and I did that because I wanted a really wide net. He drew 13.8 fouls per 100 possessions. Number two in that span was LeBron James at 9.8. So four foul draws per 100 possessions more than LeBron James. The difference between him and LeBron was the difference between LeBron and 46th on the list, who is Derek Rose. It's unbelievable. And you say the thing about just like putting the entire front line in in foul trouble, you see it a lot with like, especially like the hawk series, right? Anytime they would play the hawks because the hawks just didn't have the size. They were running like Josh Smith and Al Horford who are fine defenders, especially Al Horford out there. But like, Al Horford isn't built to really take on somebody like Dwight Howard. And even though you could time out the hands because you know Dwight Howard kind of has these, I'm going to go through this motion and get to this particular post move. I'll be able to get a steal once in a while. It didn't matter. He just gets his body into you and rises up and you kind of have to follow him. So that is truly like a God dear ability that he is and just putting everybody in foul trouble. And that's the same kind of thing that Shaq was able to do as well. Yeah, I think it's telling that we're mentioning so many of these things working against the weaker opponents because I think against the weaker opponents, they crushed them. It's like a picture with an incredible fastball that guys that just can't hand or maybe the better baseball metaphor would be a curveball because back in the old days, certain players couldn't hit curveballs. I don't know if that's still a thing in baseball. But that was that was like a thing and I was like, he's a good hitter, but he can't just throw him a curveball. He can't hit a curveball. And that's how people talked in the 20th century. I think against the better teams, you lose the value of some of these elements. So like one of Dwight's big statistical footprints, if we try to say what makes him a good offensive player, where does his offensive value come from? Of course, he himself scores a ton at the rim, but he doesn't necessarily help his teammates score a ton at the rim. His presence doesn't help his teammate score a bunch at the rim and his passing certainly doesn't help his teammate score a bunch at the rim. But you know where they look great is this three-point line, right? Because of everything we're talking about, the gravity that this man has in the paint. And it's not simply a matter of post-up kick out, he came a l'Ajouan one in four out. It's not simply that. It's like the number of possessions in the playoffs, especially against these weaker teams, where Orlando spaces the floor out with four other players. They run a pick and roll, Dwight goes down the lane against a switching defender, and then the entire defense, just like in a courtier and just like shrinks like, oh god, Dwight might catch it and dunk it on all of us. That creates so much offense for Orlando. So you see a big footprint for him helping his teammates from the three-point line. And a good way to illustrate that, you go to that Celtic series back in 2010. I think it was game six, right? And there was a whole hula beloo about that particular game, because I think some people are like, this is actually game seven for the Celtics, because if they go back to Orlando, they'll say, all right, everyone, let's calm down about this series. But you can see it, like Dwight Howard rolls to the basket, and everyone just kind of, this is a very buttoned-up defense with a bunch of very smart defensive players. They have to converge on the Dwight-Rachard Lewis, an incredible playoff shooter across multiple seasons. It's just wide open on the arc, one pass away. It's not even a skip pass. It's just one pass away because of the way they set up the pick and roll. And that's how he's able, like you said, that's how he's able to open up some of these, these opportunities for his teammates on the perimeter. It's 2010. We're talking about spacing. We're talking about rim running. We're talking about four shooters on the perimeter. We haven't even mentioned Hito Turgolou playing freaking point guard as a 610 power forward. And so Cody, I think it's time we get into the serious thing we have to discuss in this conversation that is critical, maybe to other players later in this series. The answer to me, to the mystery of why in real time, it was like, is Dwight Howard the best player, or is he massively overrated, is Stan Van Gundy? Because the magic were playing ahead of the league. The magic are one of the key teams in the evolutionary phase of the NBA in the 21st century, going from the old way to play near the basket to where we are with pace and space. We think about the seven seconds or less sons. We think about Chris Bosch moving to the center in Miami. We think about the Golden State Warriors that we've talked about today. There are key pillars and key links in this evolutionary journey. And the magic were one of them. And Stan Van Gundy on both offense and defense was he was doing the playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers thing. And Dwight was the beneficiary of that. Dwight was a centerpiece in that. So one of the clearest stats to me that demonstrates this is that when Dwight Howard was on the floor from 2009 to 2011, the Orlando magic, back then the average team in the league, like some percentage, some large percentage of their shots came from long twos. Right? Remember the long two Cody. Oh, I remember the long two. You don't know how to ask them comes when we get to when we get to this era, a little over more than a quarter of all shots feel goal attempts were long twos. Okay. Okay. When Dwight Howard is on the court for the magic during this period, they are 10% below the league in long twos attempted. So the league average is like 27% 26%. They're down at 16% to put that in perspective. The league goes under 16% for the first time in 2018. So they're like a decade ahead of the league in their shot profile. Does that make sense? This works in the same way. Like I don't want to say he's a he builds the system in the same way that Dream on Green is able to with the warriors. But this works out so well because of all of these incredible strengths that Dwight Howard brings to the table. I also think it's just the way the magic played. But do you think that they would don't you think what he's able to do with the lob threat with the foul draw on it all? Yes. That unlocks that extra level of getting to that three point. I think he's being used in a future facing way. In 2010, you could easily have used him like the rockets use Yao Ming a couple years earlier. You said you go to you're very tall. You're very strong. You go to the post. And then we give you that we try to we work really hard to get you the ball in the post. And we may or may not incur some extra turnovers doing that. One of the things we forgot to mention about Dream on just like Jason kid is all that great decision making all that great point guardness that you can off load to them. You will often see a signal that suppresses the overall team turnover percentage. We're not talking about that with Dwight. Dwight's a big guy. Sometimes you inflate the turnovers because you got to throw that big guy down on the block and try to get him the ball. But Stamman gun he's like nah you know we should do spread pick and roll with hedo turgoloo and Jamir Nelson and whoever else can get out. We want shooters on the court. Michael Petrus, three and D. me up my friends. Someone go get Matt Barnes. JJ Reddick. J. Oh, JJ Reddick. Yeah. And certainly did he develop quite a bit in those early years with Orlando going from like barely scratching the rotation or the edge of the league to by the time he gets to the Clippers is like a really good valuable player. So I think they were both on offense and defense way ahead of the curve. And I think that's why you have this like, how is Orlando mysteriously winning all these extra games? Because if you just think about the shot profile, let's just stick with this. I think this is critical. The long twos Cody, 10% of those long twos are often being turned into threes. And if you look at the last 25 years and you look at the percentage of shots that have been taken outside 15 feet in the NBA, it's like a line. It's almost always half of the shots. Almost always half of the shots in the NBA are taken outside of 15 feet. It's like a straight line from 2001 to 2025. You know what changes? The long twos turn into threes. And the best part is the accuracy on those shots, all shots outside 15 feet in 2003 were 39% and are 38% excuse me, and all shots outside 15 feet in 2024 were 38%. So you're just getting the boost of being smart and getting the extra 1.5 times the points because you get the three instead of the two, you do that on 10% of your field goals, right? You can start to see how all of a sudden it's mysterious like what Orlando's got to Dwight makes him a great defense and Dwight makes him a great offense. It's like, no, the system is playing in the future. You pick up two, three, four points per game of offensive rating just from taking the three instead of the two. Do you know what that does to your record? It gives you a few more wins, Ben. It makes you like a 48 win team that goes to a 60 win team. And to me, that was the ethereal mysterious quality. And then on defense, you all obviously would have Van Gundy brothers. And they just have such a pedigree defensively. Like, hey, we're going to funnel and build everything around Dwight. We're not going to get too hung up with playing defense like it's 1997. I just think they-- yeah. I just think they were ahead of the game. Before we talk a little bit about defense, I don't know how much time we need to spend on that with Dwight. But I think in another part with the plus minus mystery in terms of Dwight Howard, as you talk about, like the revolution is here, Ben. The revolution is here in terms of how they're able to play when he's on the court. But also the back of big that's coming in, Ben, marching Gortot. I mean, we're talking about a monster screener. He has a screen named after him, right? The drive, and you stand in front of the guy when somebody comes in and takes a lap. That's the Gortot screen. That's him, right? So a bone crushing screener, solid enough, post up guy in his own right, because he's also one of these mammoth players that just goes down there, and you can't stop him. So you have-- you don't have a Dwight Howard talent out there, but you have like, a facsimile in the same way of how you play with Gortot coming in. So they don't really have to change the style too much when he's the back of big. And shocking amount of Howard Gortot minutes together, Ben. That's always an adventure to go back and watch when that's happening. I think you mean a shockingly few amount? No, you see it a lot. Like, there's a few times-- wow. That's Dwight and Gortot. No, no, I think they were famous for not playing together. You still see it, though. I'm saying that when it comes up, it's like in the playoffs and playing to Celtics. Yes, I think there they are. I think you're over indexing on the fact that they desperately tried that against the Celtics because their regular stuff wasn't working. They're well known at the time for basically separating these minutes, even though Gortot was a really good backup center. And so how do you interpret Dwight's numbers if he's being compared to possibly a low level starter on some bad teams or something like that? I mean, I think his regular season plus minus for everything we've said is still pretty good. Orlando from 2010 to 2012 in that three-year stretch was eight points better with him on the court than off the court. So I mean, this is good, especially if you adjust or curve for the fact that Martian Gortot is his backup. I think we are definitely talking about a star or superstar level player. I think what's interesting is how valuable is that offense that we described? That like, space using the spacing, what other teams have benefited-- or excuse me, with Howard have succeeded on other teams if they hadn't used that spacing with the offenses have been as good if he's kicking it out. And guys are taking long twos like they were on 27 or 28 of the other teams. These are big questions for me. But defensively, I think is a clear defensive player of the year, strong perennial candidate. In these years, I think he's an unbelievable rim protector. I think he's a little bit more mobile than people might remember. This is before he heard his back. And the athleticism was just off the charts. I have a fun Dwight's story. I went to a Christmas game. The first-- it was the year the Celtics won the title in 2008. So it was about a year before Dwight really took off and hit this peak period that we've been discussing. And I sat behind one of the baskets. And in the warm-ups, you just-- you know, the backboard's clear. So you're just looking down the other end of the court. And every 20 seconds, you just see this pair of eyes with a big smile up at the rim. And it was Dwight Hire. I'm like, wait a second. Can he look into the rim? Can you jump this eye and be this tall? So I think a tremendous shop blocker, a tremendous rim presence, especially when they funneled everything into him. Unlike Dremond, though, I don't think he had amazing awareness. And I don't think he had that anticipatory focus IQ. It wasn't a weakness per se. But you also see it in the non-prime years. One of my favorite things to do for players when I'm evaluating their peak is look at these trends in the non-prime years. And that game we talked about earlier that Dremond took over. He was playing against Dwight Howard in 2016. This was a post back surgery Dwight Howard. He's not moving as well. But this one play really jumped out to me. And I'm like, Dremond Green would never, in a million years, ever make this play. The Warriors had the ball. Someone was swinging it near the side. Sean Livingston or someone dribbles to the middle to take a shot. And Dwight runs into the lane to box someone out. There's no shot yet. There's no shot. So he left someone wide open. He's boxing someone out. Sean Livingston passes it to Dwight's man for a wide open layup. And I'm like, that's not the focus you want. So I think we're talking about a great rim protector. But some of those other subtle little things at the highest level when you get to the Celtics, when you get to the calves, when you get to the Lakers at the end of the season bleeds, it touch value compared to the other greats. You just to bring the whole Marvel full circle here right now. I think a super power. So he's just the Hulk, right? Like that's a super high. He's massive. He's stronger than everyone that you're going to see out there. You're taking this. You're taking the marvelness of the-- I need Marvel to go away forever. The superpower is supposed to be a basketball skill. But that is a skill because the skill is he's stronger than everyone. But number two, you kind of just mentioned it here. The loading up period between Dwight Howard on the ground and Dwight Howard 13 feet in the air is like that. It's just snap and he's up there. And I think that incredible contest radius is what separates him from a lot of other rim protectors. Because you see it, even in the Celtic series, Kendrick Perkins, obviously not like an offensive stun in his own right. But biffing a couple of short shots, just because he has to arc it an extra-- however many feet-- because Dwight Howard is just leaping. And let me tell you, Dwight Howard would like to leap in everything. Which obviously it's not an ideal thing a lot. Like that causes a lot of follows. It opens up for offensive rebounds and things like that. But also, anyone that came in the paint knew that he was just going to load up and get 13 feet in the air. And you see the rim deterrence, like people turning away from it. You see people just having to change the shot last second here. And that, to me, is part of his superpower defensively is that there are very few guys in history that can as quickly as he can get to the same sort of rim contesting radius that he had. That's a great point. Although he did block chase a little bit, and he does have this reputation of like swatting too many balls into the stands, so his team doesn't recover them. Wasn't there that Sloan study years ago that like Tim Duncan's teams recover most of his blocks or relative to other shop blockers in the league. His team recovers the most blocked shots from a player because Duncan's always getting the ball very low. And Dwight's going and getting it very high. So he has a ton of goal tents. So Duncan doesn't have goal tents and Dwight has a ton of goal tents and things like that. I mean, again, there are little things that I think that chip away at the obvious intimidating, massive dominating elements against just like your charlots and Atlantis of the league at that point in time. - Let me jump in here, 'cause I have a number about the goal tents. I have some stats about the goal. - Ooh, stats, yes. - So stats, I got some numbers here. So between 2009 and 2011, of the period that seems to be his peak numbers. This is just in the regular season and I ran this for every other player within that three year period of time. Dwight Howard had the second worst block to Golden ratio in the NBA during that time. So he had a Golden every 4.6 blocks that he had, right? So every four and a half blocks, there's gonna be a Golden in there. Now to put that in comparison, well, the number one, by the way, it was Jovelle McGee, right? He had a Golden every four blocks, okay. Tim Duncan, aforementioned Tim Duncan here. He played a lot of minutes. He played like 7,000 minutes during this time. He had a Golden every 291 blocks during that three year series. During that three year period. How many blocks for Jovelle, whatever four? Yeah, whatever four. Every four blocks, he would get a Golden. And then in the playoffs during that same three year peak, Dwight Howard had the worst ratio of anyone in the league. And I think if you were to map on some of those numbers to today's league, you'd surpass Nick Clackston, who I think was the leader in the, the blocks, the bad box, the Golden ratio in the 2025 season. So if you think about the given take here, yes, players are deterred from shooting at the basket. Yes, they have to change the shot. But about every five blocks or so, he's just giving the other team two points. And that adds up after a while. It's nearly one Golden every 100 possessions. It's two points every 100 possessions, Ben. Like that, that starts to add up when you're really starting to nitpick at these defensive guys. Yeah, yeah. I think this is what I'm getting at. When I think we talk about a perennial defensive player of the year level player. But for me, I think what we describe with Dremon is a better defender relative to league. He's a better defender. It's not by a ton. I think Dwight is still a really fantastic defender. And he's in this elite conversation. But I think there are little things that, again, going back 15 years and just being like, what's going on with the magic? You just sort of, there's an opaqueness to it that feels like Dwight needs to be the one to get the credit. You know, in basketball culture, the voting, you hear this all the time. Like someone needs to give in credit for the magic success. They're the first seed in the East. They need to be given credit. I don't know. Like Stan Van Gundee, can he be given credit? Can the team be given credit? I feel this way about so many spurs teams. You look at the beautiful game spurs teams and people wanted to elevate, you know, Kawaii Leonard or Tim Duncan. They must be top five or top 10 players in the league. Like, nah, man, like Patty Mills and Marco Belanelli just killing people. They're like, Boris Diaz just killing people. The synergy and the team being more than the sum of its parts and with a longer lens to go back and watch that Orlando team and go like, oh, yeah, they're running sets that, of course, they're gonna crush those defenses. You can't play that pick and roll coverage. Back then, everyone wanted to play the same pick and roll coverage, which is like this hard show, this hard hedge, where the big man runs out and he tries to slow down the ball handler, briefly, and then he looks at the vendor and orders a popcorn as he slowly meanders back into the lane. Meanwhile, the guard is like, I don't know. I guess I'll get back near the ball. No one's doing anything else. It just doesn't work against water, Orlando was running and the threes they were shooting and the ball handlers they had and certainly the rim finisher in Dwight Howard. So I think we're talking about a great player, but there's just so much nuance in that context with where Stan Van Gandhi was, is critical to it all, in my opinion. So I think it's really interesting between the Su guys, J.M.On Green and Dwight Howard, where I think both of them actually ended up in an ideal situation for them. But I think Dwight Howard, how do I want to phrase this? It's almost like he benefited from the system, from the players that are around him more, whereas J.M.On Green was the cause of the system that benefited him. Does that make sense to you? Ooh, I like that. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Can you say that again? I hope so. I need to process this. Say that again. So Dwight Howard was the beneficiary of the system and the players that are around him significantly more, but J.M.On Green was the cause of the system that benefited him so much in Golden State. So both ideal situations, but he's the reason that they were able to have such an unstoppable system. Yep. One last thing comparing these two, 'cause it's so interesting we talked about Dwight's foreboding presence at the basket and the shop blocking and all those defensive players of the years and the nuance of this shop blocking. We have, of course, our rim calculators stats, right? They try to look at what happened to the opposing shooting when a player was on the court versus off the court. And would you care to guess who influences the rim and free throw attempts of the opponent more? Is it Dwight Howard or J.M.On Green at the rim? Is it in the regular season or the playoffs? I have regular season 2009 to 2011. Dwight here versus regular season J.M.On 2015 to 2017. I know you're gonna hit me with a rope and rope here, but I feel like I have to say Dwight. It's Dremond. Yeah, okay. They're very close though. They're very close. That's my point. They're both very, very good. They do it in a different way. I will say that Dwight's magic in general were a little bit better protecting the paint. So even though the change is a little bit larger when Dremond's out there, the magic in the absolute would be a higher ranked rim protecting team. If you will, does that make sense? That makes sense. Yeah. So if you were to stack them up when they were both on the court, the magic would just look like the better paint for technique team in general. Exactly. But then when you look at the change, the warriors have a bigger drop off when Dremond goes to the bench and it's almost identical in the playoffs over those same years. And it's just, it's so interesting to me to think about that perspective because they do it in such a different way. Dremond, it's speed and horizontality. And yes, he's really long, but Dwight just, like he wants to roam the paint and they want to funnel stuff to Dwight. The pick and roll coverage is much more simplistic. Which again, when you get higher level and you run into like that 2010 series with the Celtics, Paul Pierce is like, "Oh, okay. I will take the 16 footer every, Ray Allen's like, okay, yes. I will take the 17 footer off the pick and roll every time. Series is going to be a dogfight. We're scoring 104 points per 100 possessions. I'm taking this midi every time. And now we're finding a way to get to the offense we want. It's slightly more effective than what you're used to giving up. And on defense, we're taking away that like we've figured out how to handle that. Like, oh my god, Dwight Howard's in the paint. What are we going to do? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so I basically have these guys as the exact same sort of valuation. I think a slight difference for me is I think Dwight has a, maybe ironically, I slightly wider range. I just, there's more juice to what you could do with that offense that what you were talking about. And I don't entirely know how to feel about that offense. He clearly is not an offensive centerpiece because of the lack of passing in the sense that we think of traditional offensive stars. But also that that offense is a problem like he causes problems for a lot of teams and he's hyper efficient. He doesn't take a lot of stuff off the table. So yeah, I don't know. Do you have a preference? I guess I can rank them, but I would say I have a slightly higher range for Dwight that could take him up to, oh, we're starting to talk about like the 17th or 18th best player in this series. Man, I guess I don't know which way you want to bend yourself because I think if we're talking about going onto a better team and making the better, like it's a dream on without question, but like in terms of, hey, we kind of just have an average team. Let's see if we can like make some kind of a playoff push. I think Dwight is easily the pick there. I don't know, Ben, depends on which flavor of the day you're feeling at the moment. What number? We're at number 23. Yeah. Wait, right. Yeah, okay. So we are talking now like what in the past I've described as the lower level MVP players. We are starting to bump into that territory in my opinion. These guys are really good. And I will say Dwight Howard at 23 and Dreym on green at 22. Flip a coin. I suppose the tiebreaker here for me would be just that big moment leadership competitiveness, communication focus. I just try. I've seen it way more times click through with Dreym on that's my I guess that's my tiebreaker. I think that's fair. Right. The game sevens just just compare the game sevens. I feel like that's got to be the the coin. Game seven Dreym on. Game seven. It's like James worthy out there. Does Dwight have game sevens? Is that a thing that he's just thinking that as I was saying he's played three he's played three game sevens. Oh, yeah. It is career. I don't remember if any of those were one of them was yes, the 2009 against the Celtics when the Celtics were injured. That was a seven game series. Do you remember that? Oh, no, I actually don't. Yeah, that was the only one. Man, I can't believe some of these series were 16 years ago. That's crazy. To support the show patreon.com/thinkabaskable, that's the best way to do it. We have a ton of these historical stats that we reference quite a bit. Players series, for instance, you can go through every player series and look at our our breakdown of stats and quickly see stuff like, hey, you know, Dremont. on Flirts with 15 to 18 points. Sometimes Jason Kidd, Flirts with 18 to 22, Dwight Flirts with Dwight Rarely has a positive plus minus in a playoff series, et cetera, et cetera, patreon.com/thinkingbasketball. We also have a wild and crazy discord community where we talk about movies all the time. That's a lot of fun. So Cody, we are now getting really serious. We're getting really serious. We're basically just, we're practically MVPs all the way, the rest of the way. Do you have any final parting thoughts or post mortems on this one? - I mean, I'm just looking at the time and in my head I'm like, man, can we shave it down to an hour? Do people want to listen to an hour and 20 minutes of us just breaking down? But maybe people, maybe that's what they want during the summer. Everyone else seems to be taking a break and not doing their pods and we're out here like, "Hey, did you see Dwight Howard in 2010 against Elhorfer?" - Hey, man, careful what you wish for. I think some of the, no, because some of these other guys, if they're either modern or we've done a ton of stuff on them, - Oh, that's fair. - It's not gonna be as deep. These players are setting up things that are going to happen. We saw the Jason Kid concepts flowing into Dremon, Green, and there's some more of the concepts that we discussed today that will connect to later players in this series. And I think the Dwight Howard Stan Van Gandhi won is huge for me and it's gonna come back later on. - Yeah, but you also have to account for the two part through holiday episode that's coming up in the series. - What is this? Is there a bet? You have a bet with someone on Reddit about having to say Drew all the day, every episode? - I just saw a time stamp. Like, "Oh no, I didn't get him in here at this point." So we're gonna see if we can keep this going. - Thanks as always for listening all the way on this one and we will be back for episode four of this series next time. I just hope you're having a great day. (upbeat music)