Dwight Howard Can Still Win Defensive Player of the Year Again Very Soon

It wasn't that long ago that Dwight Howard was universally considered the best center and defensive player in the league. However, declining play the last two seasons has raised the question: Can he regain his Defensive Player of the Year form?

While he was with the Orlando Magic, Howard was a beast. From the 2007-08 season until 2011, he was First Team All-NBA, First Team All-Defensive Team and the East’s starting center in the All-Star Game.

From 2008-09 through 2010-11, he was the named the DPOY, making him the only player to ever win the award three consecutive times.

However, since then he hasn’t dominated to the same degree. He’s still one of the best in the league, but he’s no longer clearly better than everyone else. Not only has he not won any more DPOY awards, but he hasn’t even been named to an All-Defensive team.

This raises the question: Is Howard’s career in decline, or have injuries and switching teams just put a speed bump on his road to the Hall of Fame? Let’s take a look at both sides of the argument. Let’s also consider whether Howard can return his defense to an elite level.

The Argument For a Career Decline

Many of the factors that go into deciding awards such as DPOY or All-Defensive or All-NBA teams are purely subjective. During the “Dwightmare” saga which spanned from the 2011-12 season to the summer of 2013, Howard’s image took a massive hit.

The perception (fair or not) is that he got Stan Van Gundy fired and left Orlando anyway, earning the reputation of a wishy-washy coach-killer.

After being traded to the Los Angeles Lakers, he decided he didn’t like where he’d been traded and bolted in free agency for the Houston Rockets, leaving another slain coach (Mike Brown), a shattered franchise and a miffed Kobe Bryant in his wake.

And he did it all while smiling, shooting free throws for candy and eating cookies off his face. The cavalier, seemingly childish attitude he held through all of it was somewhere between off-putting and infuriating, depending on where your loyalties were.

Some could argue that the perception of his character, not his play, is the reason why the accolades have stopped coming.

But the numbers argue for decline.

With his offense, that’s expected. He went from being Orlando's offensive centerpiece to being a second option with Los Angeles and Houston. But his defensive numbers have been taking a hit, too, as demonstrated by his defensive win shares per 48 minutes.

And yes, teams can impact those things, but defensive real plus-minus (DRPM) and its predecessor, defensive real adjusted plus-minus (DRAPM), tracked by stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com, at least attempt to mitigate some of those factors. And that shows the same conclusion:

Sometimes those subjective voters are relying on substantive data objectively. It looks like Howard’s career is in decline.

The Argument Against Decline

The problem with the objective argument is that it’s overly simplistic, annulling the possibility of mitigating factors. That his numbers have regressed could mean that his career is in decline. It could also mean other things.

It could be injury-related. Prior to his being traded to the Lakers, Howard had a lumbar microdiscectomy to treat radiculopathy caused by a herniated disc. In layman’s terms, that means he had to have some gunk removed from his back because it was making for a serious owie.

Howard told Ramona Shelburne of ESPN Los Angeles what the injury was like at its worst:

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There was a practice where I couldn't even bend over. I just felt it all the way down my leg. That's when I knew something was wrong. The doctor said, 'If you can't do a calf raise, you need to have surgery.' And I couldn't do it.

"

Not being able to use your legs is bad. Legs and basketball go really well together, what with all that running and jumping stuff. So, Howard went under the knife. According to Doug Freeman of the Good Point:

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While this type of surgery has generally had a positive impact on the symptoms and has allowed athletes to return to their sport, it isn’t foolproof when it comes to getting an NBA player back to their past level of production. In a study looking at a player’s ability to return to sport after a lumbar disc herniation, researchers found that 25% (6 out of 24) of players who underwent a discectomy did not return to the NBA. Of the players that did return, they played an average of 20 less games in their first season back from surgery. There was also a decline in statistical categories such as points per game, assists per game, rebounds per game and steals per game in their first season post-surgery (although no difference was found between players who had surgery and those who did not).

"

The first season back, one would expect to see the type of decline Howard had, especially when you factor in that he was experiencing a torn labrum over the same period.

Last season he was recovered, and if health were a part of the reason for the decline, then we’d have expected to see Howard gradually improve over the course of the season. Based on data from NBA.com/STATS, his offensive and defensive ratings from month to month show his impact on the game did just that:

In fact, during April, the Rockets had a massive 124.5 offensive rating while Howard was on the court and were yielding just 103.7—good for a net rating of 20.8 points. 

The defense fluctuated more, but it was significantly better with Howard than without it, giving up two fewer points per 100 possessions. Patrick Beverley, the All-Defensive point guard, also missed time, which accounted for some of the variance.

Howard’s improvement supports the notion that as he got healthy and got his conditioning back, his game returned to the same pre-injury levels.

Additionally, a study at stats-for-the-NBA.appspot.com shows a conventional aging curve for defensive players. They typically maintain prime performance up until around 32 to 33 years of age. Howard is still only 28. Ergo, he’s a long way from the point where age starts taking hold of him.

A fair assessment indicates that the injuries, not age, are the reason for the decline in numbers. That means a bounce is a reasonable expectation. Next year should be a nearly complete return to form.

Can Howard’s Defense Return to an Elite Level?

Howard’s 2010-11 season was one of the most dominating defensive years I’ve ever witnessed. The Magic were only the third-best defense in the league that year, but Howard’s performance was still historically great.

Getting to “only” third was impossible, yet he still did it. To say that Howard didn’t have any help on defense is to give the rest of the team entirely too much credit. The best help Howard had was Mickael Pietrus, Vince Carter and Marcin Gortat.

So what happened? Barely more than one month into the season, the Magic traded those guys for Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Richardson and Earl Clark. So he went from having almost no defensive help to absolutely no help.

Howard didn’t miss a beat, though. He just made everyone around him look better. Surrounded with Jameer Nelson, Richardson, Turkoglu and Brandon Bass, he strapped the team on his back and carried them to being the third-best defense in the NBA (no wonder he needed surgery!).

Look at what happened to the opponent’s Player Efficiency Rating (oPER from 82games.com) of the teammates involved in the trade:

Pietrus and Gortat didn’t see much impact on their oPER, but it’s evident that Howard was compensating for the flaws of the others.

I don’t know if Howard can ever achieve that level of defense again. It was such a feat, though, that he doesn’t have to in order to get back to All-Defensive or even Defensive Player of the Year stature. His numbers aren’t as dominant, but his 4.91 DRPM was still sixth-best last year, so it’s not far off.

In fact, his numbers are close enough that he could even win the DPOY next year. That’s because he has something he’s never had before: two teammates who can stop at the perimeter.

Last season was the first time in his career that Howard saw a teammate (Beverley) named to an All-Defensive team. Now they’ve added Trevor Ariza, who has All-Defensive potential as well. That frees Howard to lay back and do what he does the best—protect the rim. And a great rim protector can change the entire complexion of a team when given the chance.

If the Howard-Ariza-Beverley triumvirate can hoist the Rockets to a top-five defense, Howard will deserve the most credit for it and will get it. That can elevate him back into the Defensive Player of the Year conversation. Joakim Noah got there last year with the help of Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson. Marc Gasol won it in 2012-13 with the help of Tony Allen and Mike Conley.

Howard might not ever get back to the same level of dominance he enjoyed in Orlando, but he’s close enough to get his fourth DPOY. 

Unless otherwise stated, the stats for this article were obtained from 82games.com, Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com/STATS.