For Houston Rockets center Dwight Howard, even a simple smile or laugh can be enough to fuel his legion of critics.
We found that out before Wednesday’s Game 2, when Los Angeles Times reporter Ben Bolch tweeted this while watching Howard during his team’s shootaround.
“Dwight Howard was laughing while teammates shot free throws during shootaround, as if this was a midweek game in January,” Bolch wrote. “It doesn’t matter if Howard played well in a Game 1 LOSS,” Bolch continued. “His team is down 0-1 in a playoff series at home. Time to be serious.”
Allen Iverson might have a suitable response to the heavy analysis of a morning shootaround.
But in the interest of being serious, let’s focus on the game itself. In a Game 2 the Rockets absolutely had to win to keep reasonable hope alive of advancing to the Western Conference Finals, Howard did what he has always done in his postseason appearances with the Rockets.
Even with an occasional smile and playing through foul trouble, Howard dominated between the lines, where it counts — helping the Rockets beat the Clippers, 115-109, and knot the series at 1-1.
“Win or go home”
“At this point, it’s win or go home,” Howard said after a Game 2 in which the Rockets overcame a 13-point deficit midway through the third quarter. “Every possession counts. I’ve got to continue to play hard, continue to play through whatever. There’s plays where I have to step back and not pick up a cheap foul. But late in the game, if somebody is attacking the basket, I have to make sure I do my job to protect the rest of my teammates.”
With 24 points (8-of-11 FG), 16 rebounds and four blocks against a very good opposing center in DeAndre Jordan, his play was certainly no laughing matter for the Clippers. Besides the numbers, Howard’s position defense also helped slow a red-hot Blake Griffin, who scored just eight points on 2-of-9 shooting in the second half after putting up 26 on 11-of-14 in the first half.
“Dwight did a nice job putting a body on [Griffin], not letting him be quite as free as he was in the first half,” Rockets coach Kevin McHale said.
In the big picture, it was a continuation of a series of stellar playoff performances for Howard in Houston that continue to fly under the national radar.
Howard’s playoff history in Houston
A year ago, the Rockets underachieved in the postseason – losing in six games to the fifth-seeded Portland Trail Blazers in the first round. Much attention was given to James Harden’s struggles, and fairly so. After all, Harden’s shooting dipped from 45.6 percent during the season to 37.6 percent in the playoffs, contributing to a steep decline of 23.5 to 18.3 in his PER.
Nonetheless, the Rockets were still very competitive in that series and – if not for a miraculous shot by Damian Lillard in the final second of Game 6 – would have taken the 54-win Blazers to a Game 7 in Houston. How did they stay in it? Pretty simple, actually.
Howard carried them.
In averaging just over 38 minutes, Howard put up 26 points on 54.7-percent shooting, grabbed 13.7 rebounds and blocked 2.8 shots. Long known for his free-throw struggles, he even connected on 62.5 percent from the stripe. His PER rose from 21.3 in the regular season to 27.2 in the playoffs. Houston’s surprising series loss overshadowed it in the national media, but Howard was phenomenal.
For the longest time, an encore in the 2015 playoffs didn’t appear likely. Now 29 years old and an 11-year veteran, Howard was absent in 41 games this season due to ongoing knee troubles. That’s a higher total of games than Howard had missed in his first 10 seasons combined. Although he returned for good in late March, he was on a minutes restriction and never even broke the 30-minute mark.
But here we are in May, and “Playoff Dwight” has somehow reappeared. Again.
Knee troubles behind him
Defensively, Howard leads the playoffs in blocks per game at 3.4 and in rebounds per game at 13.6. In short, he’s controlling the paint, as he is paid max dollars to do. His incredible 26-rebound total in Game 3 at Dallas effectively allowed Houston to close out that first-round series.
But it’s the block total that is even more impressive, considering the knee injuries that seemed to zap his explosiveness in the regular season and limited him to 1.6 blocks per night – the second-lowest total of his career. He’s now more than doubling that figure.
“There were a lot of times where I thought we had baskets and then Superman showed up,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said after Howard blocked five shots in Game 1. “He is a very disruptive guy to score against.
“I have not seen him this athletic since maybe the Orlando years – powerful, athletic,” Rivers added. “Yeah, he has it back, for sure.”
On offense, Howard is averaging 18.4 points on 62 percent shooting. Perhaps more importantly, he is doing it on just 11.3 shots after shooting 17.7 times in the Portland series a year ago. In that series, Howard had to take on a bigger offensive role due to Harden’s struggles.
But with Harden – who finished second in MVP voting earlier this week – playing at a much improved level this postseason, Howard has proven selfless and willing to accept a lesser role without complaint. Long known for wanting more post touches, Howard and the Rockets have learned to save those for periods when Harden is out of the game. When Harden and Howard are playing together, the priority has become the pick-and-roll.
“I can’t focus on that,” Howard said of his shots. “I’ve got to continue to be a presence on the defensive end, get more blocked shots, get more rebounds, run the floor more, do all the things I can do, not focus so much on if I’m getting the ball or not.”
Best of all, Howard is averaging 34 minutes in the playoffs and has now played 35 minutes or more in five consecutive games – indicating that he may finally have put the knee problems behind him.
“His knee has been good,” McHale said. “He is bouncy again. His knee has been responding well, as we had hoped.”
Series shifts to West Coast
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the Rockets this postseason. Despite Wednesday night’s win, the Game 1 loss gave the Clippers a split in Houston, all without Chris Paul playing a single minute. Los Angeles now has home-court advantage for what essentially has become a best-of-five series.
But even in that sloppy Game 1 defeat, Howard was magnificent with 22 points (9-of-13 FG), 10 rebounds and the five blocks. It was Harden who underachieved, scoring just 20 and putting up a staggering nine turnovers.
In Game 2, the Rockets were able to pair Howard’s usual strong performance with a much more efficient and MVP-like game from Harden (32 points, seven assists on only 17 shots), and with it Houston was able to turn a 16-point loss into a six-point victory.
“Amazing,” Harden said. “We’ve done it all year, finding a way to win. We let Game 1 slip away and we didn’t want that feeling for Game 2. It’s going to be a tough two games, but we’ve got our mojo now.”
The series now shifts to Los Angeles and the Staples Center, home to Howard’s loudest critics from his awkward 2012-13 campaign with Kobe Bryant and that other Los Angeles franchise, the Lakers. He will undoubtedly hear it from the crowd about how he’s not serious enough to win. He might even smile and laugh at it a time or two from the bench, as he’s done in the past.
But when the whistle blows and the ball enters play, “Playoff Dwight” should again reappear. It’s serious to Howard, and that also makes it a serious matter for anyone lining up against him.
“Dwight is a monster right now,” Houston forward Corey Brewer said. “It’s fun to watch, and it’s just fun to be a part of.”
Ben DuBose is a veteran sports reporter who has followed the Houston Rockets and the NBA since Hakeem Olajuwon was Akeem Olajuwon. He writes for both SheridanHoops and ClutchFans, an independent Rockets blog. You can follow him on Twitter.