The teacher isn’t pleased with the student.
After spending the summer working with Olajuwon over the summer to correct his bad habits, Dwight has gone right back to many of them, according to ‘The Dream’ himself.
One of the major areas Dwight worked with Hakeem on was his free throws–Howard is shooting a career low in free throws early into the season.
Olajuwon has taken notice of Howard’s play this season and the former Rocket big is less than impressed, via NBA.com
“The truth is that I can’t wait to get back to Houston to do more work with Dwight,” said Olajuwon, who left Houston in early October to return to his home in Amman, Jordan and has been keeping track of his pupil on TV. “I wish he was doing a better job.”
“Dwight has always been athletic and aggressive and he still is. But when I watch him, what I see are opportunities that he is missing. When he gets the ball, he seems to be taking his time to decide what move to make, where he should go.
“There should not be a delay for Dwight. He must be able to make a faster recognition of the situations and react immediately with a go-to move. You must move right away before the defense has a chance to set up. You must be the one making the first move so that you can force the defender to always be the one reacting.
“I thought we were doing a good job with this when we were working together over the summer and at the start of training camp. But what I see now is that when Dwight gets in competition, he has a tendency to go back to all of his old habits. He’s just doing all of the things that he did before. He needs a reminder.”
Hakeem basically said everything short of ‘I’m not hurt–I’m just disappointed’.
Howard has a long ways to go before he can ever be mentioned in the same sentence with Olajuwon.