A Quick Look At Dwight Howard’s Struggles Against The Boston Celtics

Yardbarker.com

Dwight Howard has had some problems against the Boston Celtics this season.

The Celtics have an advantage that most teams don’t usually have against the Magic. They’ve been able to cover Howard one-on-one at times and have not been forced to double-team him as often as other teams, making it much more difficult or the Magic to get open shots.

The Celtics also have several bigs – Kendrick Perkins, Rasheed Wallace, Glen Davis, and Shelden Williams – they can throw at Howard.  I didn’t include Kevin Garnett because Celtics Head Coach Doc Rivers is not going to risk getting an important player like Garnett into foul trouble against Howard.

Let’s take a look at the trouble the Boston defense has given Howard this season.

As you can see, Howard has had a lot of trouble on the offensive end against the Celtics and although Perkins gets much of the credit because he had some success defending Howard during the 2009 postseason, the big man has played in just 72 total minutes in four games against Orlando this season (18.0 per game). Howard has consistently gotten Perkins into foul trouble. Perkins has picked up 18 fouls against the Magic this season – that’s one foul per every four minutes. He has been limited to 4.3 points and 3.0 rebounds per game.

But it hasn’t only been Howard that has struggled offensively. His entire team has. The Magic have scored just 88 points per game against the Celtics.

On the other side, Orlando’s defense, led by Howard, has also been dominate, allowing the Celtics to score  just 87 points per game.

This should come as no surprise.  Boston finished ranked fifth in the league in defensive rating while Orlando finished third.

Howard’s rebounding and shot-blocking has actually been better against Boston than it was on average during the rest of the regular season (but not by much), so it seems Howard’s struggles are due to Boston’s team defense and scheme rather than a single playing doing a good job against him.

And you can be assured that attacking that defense something Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy is already working on.

(Andrew Melnick is Howard the Dunk’s lead blogger, a contributor on the Fansided Front Page and at Sir Charles In Charge. Subscribe to his RSS feed, add him on Twitter to follow him daily and you can get the HTD app here).