It isn’t that Dwight Howard isn’t a good basketball player.
It is he isn’t a 1A basketball player anymore and doesn’t want to accept that.
The great teams normally have a superstar, a great secondary player, a very good third wheel and then bunch of role players.
Dwight wants to be used like a like a superstar or a great secondary player, when at this point of his career he is more like Deluxe Tristan Thompson.
Players like Thompson know their role, but Dwight who has been a superstar in the league doesn’t accept that and it can cause problems with the teams. It is one of the reasons the Rockets didn’t try at all to re-sign him.
James Harden is their superstar and everyone needed to fall in line. Jason Terry in this story on Bleacher Report explains why Howard being gone is a good thing.
Tensions between Harden and co-star Dwight Howard sank the Rockets last season and cost McHale his job.
By last spring, the Rockets had resolved to cut ties with Howard. Their identity would be defined by Harden more than ever, requiring a coach with the pedigree and the playbook to fully exploit his skill set.
Jason Terry, who spent two seasons in Houston, now sees Harden making Nash-like reads and Nash-like passes. Beyond that, “He’s at ease now,” says Terry. “Him not having to worry about sacrificing his game for Dwight, it’s huge.”
Sometimes there is addition by subtraction and this was one of those cases.