Dwight Howard's reputation once-pristine reputation has really taken a beating this season. The latest blow is this piece from SI's Ian Thomsen that attaches the brutal "coach-killer" tag to Howard. Now, very occasionally, that's a label you can escape. Magic Johnson was a "coach killer" after he allegedly got Paul Westhead run out of LA. Then he won four more rings under Pat Riley, and all was well again. But the gist of Thomsen's piece is that Howard needs to leave Orlando because he can't survive there anymore after his coach, Stan Van Gundy, publicly declared that Howard wanted him fired, and was telling the Magic that he wouldn't re-sign unless Van Gundy was shipped out. Let's assume for a moment that this is all true (not to say that it isn't, but Howard and his people (understandably) haven't confirmed it. The real question is, what do you want Howard to do?
As sports fans, we certainly bristle at the prospect of players holding their coaches hostage. We all want superstar players to act like Kevin Durant or John Stockton-- consummate pros who can never be heard complaining about their coach or taking a hard line with their organizations. We all cheered when Durant quietly announced that he was re-upping with the Thunder shortly after (or maybe it was before?) LeBron James made a big spectacle of quitting on the Cavs to join DWade in Miami. But this Howard case has really brought into focus the dilemma facing stars facing free agency. What do I mean? Well, let me clarify.
I'll start with a few propositions that should be pretty uncontroversial. First, we judge superstars differently than we judge role players or even regular stars. Ultimately, with most players, winning rings is nice, but those rings aren't career-defining. Big Baby Davis, Kendrick Perkins, Trevor Ariza, Matt Bonner, and any number of players like them may be NBA Champions, but we don't judge their careers based on that. Champions, ultimately, are judged by their star players. Last year's Mavs were defined by Dirk Nowitzki's greatness on offense, with Tyson Chandler playing an indispensable role keying the defense. The Lakers of the last decade have alternately been the Shaq-Kobe Lakers, the Kobe-Shaq Lakers, and the Kobe-Pau Lakers. The Celtics of 2008 were anchored by the KG-Pierce-Allen trio, with Rajon Rondo the indispensable fourth wheel. The constantly-contending Spurs have been defined by the presence of Tim Duncan, with Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili playing important roles as sidekicks. The role players have undoubtedly been important, but they've also been somewhat interchangeable-- replace DeShawn Stevenson with a Tony Allen or Shawn Marion with a Trevor Ariza and they may well win a title anyway; hell, they may even be better. Similarly, the Lakers won a title with Ariza, jettisoned him in favor of MWP (Ron Artest) and won another ring. Because the championship teams aren't defined by their role players, those role players' careers also aren't defined by their ability (or failure) to win a ring. At best, they can be an oddity who happened to push a whole bunch of elite teams over the top (the prototypical example of this is Robert Horry-- he won rings with Hakeem's Rockets, Shaq and Kobe's Lakers and Duncan's Spurs. But the only people talking about those hall-of-famers winning rings on Big Shot Bob's squads have their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks. Even star players who aren't in that pantheon aren't judged by the same standard as the true superstars. Notice, for instance, all the flak that LeBron takes for not having won a ring and compare it to guys like Brandon Roy and Deron Williams, or even an ex-MVP like Steve Nash. Right now, no one's arguing that Nash's career is somehow tainted by his failure to win a ring as a franchise centerpiece. The reasoning seems pretty straightforward-- Nash has been a terrific player for a long time, but he doesn't have the physical skills to dominate a game the way a Jordan or a LeBron does. So, as much as we hate to see it, we don't hold BRoy or Nash to the same standard that we hold a transcendent player like a Jordan or even a Tim Duncan.
Now we come to our second proposition. That not all coaches and organizations are created equal. We can talk until we're blue in the face about how Michael Jordan took a moribund Bulls franchise, breathed life into it, and won six rings. About how Magic Johnson lifted the Lakers to a title every other year for a decade, and about how the Spurs were a bridesmaid franchise until Tim Duncan arrived and started winning rings for fun. And that's all a substantial part of the story. But it's not close to all of it. Remember, Jordan didn't win a ring (or even make the NBA Finals) until his seventh season. Maybe coincidentally (but definitely not) it wasn't until the Bulls added a second hall-of-famer in Scottie Pippen, along with the most successful coach in NBA history in Phil Jackson, that Jordan began winning titles. Would the Bulls have won 6 rings in Jordan's last 6 full seasons as a Bull without Jackson behind the bench, Pippen playing Robin to MJ's Batman, and a stream of solid, steady role players who complemented Jordan perfectly on the roster? Again, possible... but I doubt Bob Hill was going three-peating all that often. Similarly, the Spurs may have won four rings behind Tim Duncan... but Gregg Popovich was on the bench for each of those rings, and R.C. Buford compiled rosters around Duncan that unearthed future stars like Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili deep in the draft, and surrounded Duncan with role players who slotted into that team perfectly. Again, stick Flip Saunders on the bench and a parade of mediocrities on the wings, and this franchise isn't going anywhere either.
Third and last, players, even the greats, can't lift franchises by themselves. By at worst his third, and certainly his fourth, season in the league, Michael Jordan was the best player in the NBA. It's equally clear that LeBron is the best player in the league right now (not to say that LeBron is Mike; I still subscribe to there being a difference between a great, super-talented player and a champion). But even guys that good can't win titles on their own. A hall-of-famer with a mediocre coach and crummy players around him still isn't going to win a ring.
Which leaves us at a crossroads: if a superstar is going to be judged by his ability to win rings, and his franchise and coach aren't up to the task, he's stuck in a catch-22. Howard is certainly one of 5 or 6 players in the league right now who can be legitimately characterized as a surefire future hall-of-famer/franchise player (LeBron, Kobe Bryant, Duncan and probably in a few years Kevin Durant are the others). Even future hall-of-famers like Nash and Jason Kidd, and maybe even DWade and Kevin Garnett don't necessarily fit into that category. At this point, Howard's reaching a bit of a crossroads. He's only 26 years old, but he's already in his 8th year. At this point, he still hasn't been to the finals. And, worse yet, the Magic don't exactly look like they're knocking on the door. The guys on the court with Howard at the tip off are Jameer Nelson, Jason Richardson, Hedo Turkoglu, and Ryan Anderson. Those guys are all some combination of mediocre, old, and not good enough. And unlike San Antonio, which goes 11 or 12 deep, the Magic's bench isn't exactly overflowing with top-notch pieces. To top it all off, Stan Van Gundy, while he isn't a bad coach by any means, is no Phil Jackson. When the Magic step onto the court against the Heat, Howard will eat Joel Anthony for breakfast, but the prospect of the Holy Turk trying to check LeBron and Jason Richardson lining up on D-Wade doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
So now Howard is on the verge of free agency. He realizes (not unreasonably) that Van Gundy probably isn't the coach who is going to take him to the top. And he also realizes that this isn't a team that is a tweak or two away-- it needs at least one major piece, and a couple of upgraded role players to compete. So when Howard heads into negotiations over a new contract, here's his situation. He doesn't want to play for a coach like Van Gundy who has a grating personality and probably isn't the guy to win a ring with. He wants to convey to management that they really need to upgrade the roster in order for him to come back. But, at the same time, the standard by which the public treats him, and his leverage over the franchise in negotiations, are different from those of ordinary players. If Ersan Ilyasova or Jared Dudley tell a franchise that they don't want to play for the chosen coach, the franchise tells them just where to stuff it and moves on to a different coach. If Dwight Howard tells the franchise he doesn't want to play for a particular coach, the franchise is in a different situation altogether. They could tell Howard where to stuff it... and then they end up with Stan Van Gundy coaching a roster that's possibly even worse than the Wizards'. And, whereas the national media won't blink twice about the Bucks losing Ilyasova or the Suns losing Dudley, Howard leaving the Magic is kind of a huge deal. So they're in just a bit of a pickle.
Which brings us to the comparison between Howard and everyone's (including my) favorite poster boy for team play, Kevin Durant. KD quietly re-upped with the Thunder two summers ago instead of testing the market. We cheered. But look at where he re-upped. He had a coach he liked in Scott Brooks. He was surrounded with a burgeoning star in Russell Westbrook and a well-constructed roster with a very solid third scorer in James Harden, a solid perimeter defender in Thabo Sefolosha, and a long bench of quality role players. Perhaps most importantly, he had a GM in Sam Presti who had shown an astute ability to build a roster that perfectly complemented Durant's talents. Looking at the team, Durant realized that this team had a great chance to win going forward. The fact that he didn't have to suffer the taint that superstars inevitably suffer when they change teams must have sealed the deal. Now compare that to Howard's situation. He's on a team with a decent emerging power forward in Ryan Anderson, but the rest of the starting five ranges from average to catastrophic. The bench is short. The franchise has had years to build a team around Howard, and all they've done is shuttled guys like Vince Carter in and out. This off-season, their big addition was... Big Baby. And their retiring GM embarrassingly drunk-dialed Howard begging him to stay. Is this really a franchise Howard wants to stake his legacy to?
So at that point, Howard's stuck. He can play the good soldier, re-up with the Magic and endure what is likely to be another 5-10 years of haplessness. He can enter the market and sign with what he thinks is a better team, in which case his legacy takes a hit no matter what (a bunch of the real rarefied greats- Jordan, Magic, Bird, Russell-- were one-team guys), and that hit becomes huge if he switches teams and still doesn't win a ring. He could demand a trade, in which case his legacy again takes a pounding. Or he can demand that his team take steps to turn the franchise itself into a viable contender. None of these options is "correct", per se. All of them, in fact, are deeply flawed. Which is what makes Howard's situation so hard-- ultimately, Thomsen is right that he's got a lot of power, and he doesn't know what to do with that power. But what I think Thomsen doesn't stress enough is that it's not clear what the right thing to do with that power is.
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