Dwight Howard Be Careful What You Wish For

[Kane3387]

Below are some excerpts from an article on ESPN. It's an Insider Article By Chris Broussard. He does a nice job pointing out how all the players who have forced their way off teams have rarely succeeded. It is a message to Dwight Howard to be careful what you wish for. This isn't the entire article, but the best stuff is below.

A few months after the Big Three announced their move to the Miami Heat, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told me the player-as-GM model would not be as successful as the players think. Cuban has been proven prophetic, as the superstars who left their original clubs have not only failed to win championships but even put their legacies in peril. This is something for Dwight Howard to think about as he ponders whether to stay with the Orlando Magic beyond next season.

LeBron James

Let's start with LeBron James. Obviously, the Heat are a serious title contender and capable of not only winning this season's championship but also becoming a dynasty. Yet with four weeks left before the playoffs begin, Miami looks like anything but a world-beater. If the Heat don't win the title this season, the damage to James' legacy will be nearly irreparable. Of course, he's a surefire Hall of Famer, title or not. Yet, failure this year could drop James into the Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson crowd. That's a great crowd, no doubt, but James was supposed to be in the Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant crowd. Anything less will be viewed as underachievement or, worse, failure.

In going to Miami, James upped the ante on his legacy. If he had stayed in Cleveland, the pressure to win a ring would not have been what it is now. In Cleveland, where James had no second star, the blame would have always, rightly or wrongly, gone elsewhere, landing on his teammates, his coaches or the front office. And winning just one ring in Cleveland would have been as much of an accomplishment as winning two or maybe three with the power-packed Heat. Failing to win in Cleveland would not have subjected James to the "loser" label. Failing to win in Miami, where he has arguably the most talented team in the league, might lead some observers to brand him as that.

That's not to mention the damage James did to his brand or the fact that he went from playing in front of one of the most raucous crowds in the league in Cleveland to one of the most disinterested in Miami. Of course, if James and the Heat win it all this year, everything will be fine. He will have made the right decision. But if they don't, and particularly if Derrick Rose's Bulls or Kevin Durant's Thunder win the ring, James' stature in the game will probably never be the same. The mythic torch that Bryant was supposed to have passed to LeBron will have flown right by him and into the hands of Rose or Durant.

Chris Bosh

Now, on to Bosh. He is not being used correctly in Miami, where instead of being treated like one of the game's top five power forwards, he is treated like a role player. He spends most of his time on the offensive end floating around the foul line extended, launching jump shots. While his scoring has understandably dropped (to 18 ppg) in Miami, his misuse on the offensive end seems to have hurt his rebounding. He used to be one of the game's best rebounders. Now he grabs a measly seven boards a game. (Last season, it was eight.) And he's also regularly doing something he's not all that fond of -- playing center. If the Heat don't win the crown, Bosh may end up second-guessing his decision.

Carmelo Anthony

Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks have been awful. Carmelo Anthony ruined Denver's season last season by forcing his way to the New York Knicks. Well, after 67 games with the Knicks, Anthony's move can only be described thus far as an abject disaster. From a team standpoint, Anthony was better off out West. With the Denver Nuggets, he reached the playoffs every season and won at least 50 games his last three years there. In 2009, he reached the Western Conference finals and nearly beat Bryant's Lakers.

Now he's just hoping to reach the postseason, what with the Knicks barely clinging to the eighth and final playoff seed. In Denver, Anthony never experienced a nonwinning season. Since he's been a Knick, the club's record in games he's played is 33-34. Without him, they are 6-5. Stoudemire is out the next two to four weeks - likely until next season- with a bulging disc in his back. With suspect knees and recurring back problems, there are legitimate questions about whether Stoudemire will return to All-Star form.

And on an individual level, Anthony has not been nearly as good in New York as he was in Denver. In seven-and-a-half years in Denver, he averaged 25 or more points five times. This season, he's averaging a career-low 20.2 points on abysmal 40 percent shooting, well below his career shooting percentage of .455. Just as it is for James, Anthony's legacy is on the line. If he fails to make the Knicks anything more than a first-round playoff team, his legacy will be tarnished forever. In Denver, he was on a likely Hall of Fame track. With what he's done so far in New York, that is already in question.

The beaming spotlight of New York makes or breaks players. Everything is magnified, making the good appear better than it really is and the bad appear worse. Case in point: If Jeremy Lin's glorious run last month had taken place for any other franchise, it would not have been celebrated half as much as it was. That being the case, failure by Anthony to make the Knicks a perennial contender will smother his career with negativity. Remember Stephon Marbury? He was viewed as a great, top-five point guard when New York traded for him in 2004. But now the first thoughts that come to mind when his name is mentioned are all the missteps he had while playing with the Knicks. His NBA career ended when he was just 32 years old. Now he's playing in China.

Chris Paul

Paul, who forced his way out of New Orleans and ended up being traded to the Los Angeles Clippers in December. He is certainly in a better situation with the Clippers than he was in New Orleans. The Hornets are a horrible team and a struggling franchise in the midst of an ownership transfer, so anywhere would have been better for CP3.

But even with the talented Clippers on the verge of reaching the playoffs, not all that glitters has been gold. The Clippers have gone 9-12 over the past six weeks, and with several players in the locker room questioning coach Vinny Del Negro, the club is almost certainly headed for a coaching change next season, if not before. So while Paul has certainly put himself in a better position, it is not one without headaches.

OTHER EXAMPLES

The fact is, leaving a team via free agency or by forcing a trade rarely works out well for players. In 2000, Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady pulled the equivalent of James and Bosh by signing as free agents with Orlando. Expected to contend for titles for years, the Magic never won a playoff round with the two stars, as an ankle injury left Hill mostly inactive, and McGrady, while terrific individually, never led Orlando to team success. After forcing his way to Houston McGrady also failed to win a playoff series there as well. Moreover, the Detroit club Hill left after six seasons and no playoff series victories won the NBA championship four seasons later, in large part because of Ben Wallace, whom the Pistons got in the Hill sign-and-trade with Orlando.

In 2004, Vince Carter began squawking in Toronto and was eventually moved to New Jersey to join Jason Kidd. That would seem to be a formidable duo, and although both Carter and the Nets enjoyed some success, Carter never regained the superstardom he experienced early in his career in Canada. Ben Gordon? A stone-cold killer in the clutch in Chicago, where he averaged 20 points per game for five seasons, but Gordon's career has been nondescript and playoff-free after he signed with the Detroit Pistons in 2009. Can you imagine Gordon playing next to D-Rose in Chicago?

I'll even throw in Shawn Marion, whose dissatisfaction in Phoenix led the Suns to trade him to Miami in 2008. A perennial All-Star who averaged around 20 points and 10 rebounds per game in Phoenix, Marion has played for three teams since the Suns and never averaged more than 13 points for a full season since leaving the desert. He did, of course, win a title last season in Dallas, but that's after plenty of relocating and long after his star status had diminished.

Those That Worked - Celtics

Of course, free agency worked out for Steve Nash when he left Dallas to join Phoenix. But that was an entirely different situation, as the Mavericks didn't try very hard to keep him. Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen won a title in Boston, but neither of them pressured their teams into trading them. Shaquille O'Neal is the greatest success story of recent free agency, winning three rings after leaving Orlando for the Lakers. But that was all the way back in 1996.

[Lucky17]

Broussard conveniently leaves out the fact that (at least, as far as the story goes) KG wouldn't agree to the trade to the Celtics until after the Ray Allen trade. So there was some "player as GM" input coming from him.

[bdm860]

Eh I don't know.

It's tough to say LeBron made a mistake, yet.  Even if the Heat don't win it all this year or next.  Look it took this way, it wasn't until Shaq's 4th season in LA that they won it all, then he won 3 straight and 4 overall.  People don't think about those first 3 Laker seasons when thinking of Shaq's legacy now.

Carmelo Anthony definitely made the wrong move, but that's because he didn't make a basketball decision.  He wanted to live in New York, and his ego thought he was good enough to win anywhere.  He didn't consider coaching style, teammates, etc.  Dwight is the same way, he's not making a basketball decision.  If it wasn't obvious from the start, it should have been obvious when he said he didn't want to play in Chicago.  These guys take winning for granted.  They can win with any 11 guys, just not the 11 guys on their current team.

Chris Paul is way better off in LA, definitely a good move for him.  Barring some unforseen circumstance (major injury to him or Blake), they'll be contenders for a while.

And how can Bosh even be mentioned?  He could put up good stats and hope to make the playoffs, or slightly worse numbers and be on a good team.  No matter what happens to him in Miami, he's better off than he would have been in Toronto.

And then he goes on to mentioned guys like McGrady, Vince Carter, and Shawn Marion, really?  They would have been better off staying with their current teams?  Marion has a ring, and Carter and McGrady wouldn't have won anything in Toronto anyways.

Sure forcing a trade or leaving via free agency rarely works out, but know what else rarely works out staying with the team that drafted you and re-signing with whatever team you happen to be on.

Assume 450 players in the NBA, and only 15 win a ring every year.  So no matter what you do, it doesn't work out for 97% of the players in the NBA.

[LarBrd33]

Maybe I'm delusional here... but I still think Dwight ends up in Brooklyn if he doesn't win a title this year.  Seems there will be incentive for the Nets to trade a hefty package for Dwight or risk losing Deron and Gerald Wallace to free agency.  And I'm delusional enough to believe that Dwight hasn't actually changed his mind about wanting to play with Deron in Brooklyn... and that only being signed through next season might put some pressure on Orlando to finally move him (if Dwight continues to be unwilling to sign an extension).  Best move him in the summer than risk another media circus.