Dwight Howard Imitates Kobe Bryant (VIDEO)

I’m pretty sure if Dwight does ever leave LA it will be a ring chasing endeavor much like Shaq’s. What teams he plays for won matter because the media will spin it like “Orl, LA, and Farewell Tour for a Title” – you can bet that with this move, and their weird personal feud (specifically Shaq’s disdain for Dwight as a player) they will always be compared. And SO FAR, the comparison is legitimate. So far.

@nbk, Dwight never won ROY tho

Yeah that was Emeka Okafor. Speaking of, how do you get worse every year? Okafor was great his rookie season and just keeps sinking lower and lower every year..

Shaq was getting old. He was always injured, and he was being really ridiculous in demanding a mega contract.
Kobe wanted to be the man (which he has since admitted), and he and Shaq had a strained relationship.
But, the numbers tell the story of that Pistons series. Shaq played the same pick and roll defense he always played. The difference was the inability to score efficiently and we all know who that problem was connected to. We watched the series, we’ve studied the stats. There is no way around the facts.

Yeah, Emeka Okafor won ROY that year.
Thing is with Shaq, he recieved the star treatment before he should have.
He became rich and famous before accomplishing anything worthy of those words; midway through the his rookie year in Orlando, he’d already signed a seven-year, $40 million contract, starred in ‘Blue Chips’, recorded a rap album and became a household name. Maybe if all that never occured so early, he might have felt the need to “earn” his way to the top. I Don’t know man, I just feel his “Hollywood” antics distracted him a little. Bu then again, these days, every player seems to have the fame and status way too early in their careers….

Allen.. I agree, kobe did want to be the man. He was sick of being the “sidekick.”
But Kobe’s offense wasn’t too threatening towards their pursuit of that championship. By the time of the ’04 Finals, Kobe was the best player on that stacked Laker team. So of course, his offense was needed. Kobe scored the game-winner in Game 2 for the only win they had in that Finals. Kobe played better than any Laker in them Finals. It’s true.

LAHuey – i distincly remember the Miami Heat in year one with Shaq getting to Game 7 in the ECF. The only reason they lost is cause Wade was out Game 6 and 7 with twisted ribs. I think it is safe to say that Miami would/should have won that series barring no fluke bs injury that happened to Wade. The next year, the Heat did one better and actually won the ring. Last i checked, Kobe only has 2 rings after Shaq’s exit. Shaq could have easily have 2 chips before Kobe even got one of the two he got. What makes you think that this was an ‘easy’ decision? AllenP Shaq got 100 mill from Miami, and then took a paycut for antoine walker. It had nothing to do with the money, and everything to do with Kobe and his relationship. Hell, Shaq’s play post Lakers show that he would have been happy to defer to Kobe, immediately like next season he would have made Kobe the man.

GP, you need to go back and look at those finals or something. Oh my is what your saying wrong.
.During the 2004 playoffs,
.-Kobe shot 153 more field goals than Shaq over a 22 game span.
.-And he only made 8 more field goals total.

the so far thing. I mean we should save most of the comparisons til Dwight is done. But if your talking right now then yes it’s legitimate.

If you really look at the odds of dominant centers and other once-in-a-lifetime players ending up in the same place, over and over, in a league with as many teams as this, you have to acknowledge that there is no such thing as parity or fairness. When you crunch the numbers and look at how often the same teams contend for chips and stars, you must acknowledge that the NBA has turned the corner from a pure game to something halfway between sports and “sports-entertainment”. Why not just get it over with and name half the league the Washington Generals.

“shaq was dumb for not letting kobe do his thing” the exact next year in Miami he let dwade do his thing and they should have gotten to the damn finals barring a twisted ribs! what makes u think shaq would not have allowed kobe to do his thing?? thats what i dont get, and will never get.

Michael Jordan is an underachiever too. He could have won 8 rings in a row had he not quit basketball to play baseball. Maybe he could have averaged 35 instead of 30 had he not been a gambler, or spent time trying to improve his golf swing.

dfrance, stop being so damn logical

GP, uhm, no, they would not have used hack-a-shaq throughout the whole game. Ben Wallace only was allowed 6 fouls, ditto for Rasheed Wallace. you can’t honestly try and argue that the Piston’s would have benefited from benching them in order to foul Shaq so we’ll just dismiss your whole argument about that then, alright?
.
in the 2004 finals these are Shaq’s stats, and the outcome of the game.
.- Game 1, 34 points, 13-16 from the field, 11 rebounds – Det wins
.(Kobe goes 10-27 for 25 points)
.- Game 2, 29 points, 10-20 from the field, 7 rebounds – LA wins
.(Kobe goes 14-27 for 33 points)
.- Game 3, 14 points, 7-14 from the field, 8 rebounds – Det wins
.(Kobe goes 4-13 for 11 points)
.- Game 4, 36 points, 16-21 from the field, 20 rebounds – Det wins
.(Kobe goes 8-25 for 20 points)
.- Game 5, 20 points, 7-13 from the field, 8 rebounds – Det wins
.(Kobe goes 7-21 for 24 points)
.
Now really, who was the better player during that series?

i watched the 04 finals No biased opinion or anything, but it really looked like Kobe and Shaq were battling for the Finals MVP. Like winning the finals was never a question, who was going to be the top dog was the only question.

Yall some bias cats, did yall watch the series against the Pistons, they allowed Shaq to play one on one. Lakers should not have made the NBA Finals to me, they lucked up to be honest. Shaq was getting old fast, he was just overpowering Ben getting points. Prince was hounding Kobe, then they would alot Hamilton to chase him and Kobe had to chase Hamilton. Fisher, GP and Malone gave nothing to the Lakers. Two players cannot beat a team and the Laker guards let Billups look like Zeke the second coming, where he got his Mr. Big shot name, which now has ruined his career. To act like Kobe was not playing with FIRE, is straight sad. Pistons allowed Shaq to get his. I should pull up some of the old articles about how the Pistons was playing the series to help some of yall young bucks.

no eZ, Shaq was not Dwight’s equal defensively. What Howard does against the pick and roll being the most glaringly obvious of the differences. That and Dwight is not basically useless against quick bigs who can use the dribble as Shaq was. What made Shaq as great as Shaq was, had to do with Offense. He was a good defender, but he was nothing to write home about, (he was very foul prone anyway, so he kind of backed off a lot of the time defensively to be able to make his impact on the other end) offense was what separates Shaq from Dwight. But their situations are so different, that Dwight’s defensive dominance might be enough to carry his teams to a similar amount of success to what Shaq enjoyed.

And, you can argue about impact all you want, but that doesn’t really change anything….f*ck, the case can be made that as a player, Howard has made a greater impact. Considering he has a much more prestigious closet full of awards than Shaq did after the same amount of seasons and the same amount of team success…

Dwight is Clark Kent, when compared to Shaq. In every single category … he isn’t even as corny as ShaqFu.

Ok, the stats show otherwise. Fair enough. But, Tex Winter and Phil Jackson both stressed that due to Shaq’s ineffective defense on screen roll, they suffered greatly. I’m only satting what they said in the book. Tbh, no one Laker is to blame really. The whole team just weren’t up to par.

i’m not saying Shaq shouldn’t get some blame, but he was still their best player during that series. and Shaq’s inability to guard the screen and roll was a problem his whole career, it’s not like that weakness took them by surprise in that series. they didn’t lose because of that. they lost because Kobe and Shaq were throwing active tantrums. Shaq just so happened to throw a much much much more dominant and scary tantrum. But Kobe was younger, less injured, getting better, and even cheaper. So he was who they kept. If Shaq was the same age as Kobe, Shaq would never have been the one shipped out of town.

@pposse If you watched the 04 finals and really think that kobe and shaq were battling for finals mvp.. well i dunno what to tell you. By game 3, it was a wrap to me that the pistons were going to win the whole thing because of the continued stubborn play of the offense so in reality, none of them were battling for finals mvp. If you had 2 pick a dominant player that series, shaq was that guy. ya big ben did a good job and had a few memorable blocks on shaq but if shaq got the touches necessary he could have easily dropped 40+ in a couple of those games. the problem in the 04 finals was kobe bryant… trying to shoot over tayshaun prince and failing every time. Kobe was horrid in that finals… Kobe usually doesn’t play to his potential in the finals to begin with but i think 04 was kobe’s worst finals appearence of his career probably. Its funny when i hear people say “prince was hounding kobe”… prince was a sophmore in the NBA (although a great defender at that time). Shaq was guarded by a DPOY winner in big ben whom btw got help from sheed in some instances. shaq was defended more harshly than kobe if you take in those facts. Then you take into consideration that kobe was on avg 22ppg on 38% shooting… thats pathetic. esp when you have shaq on your team attracting doubles and you are guarded by a great but 2nd year defender whom you can somewhat exploit being the “best player on a stacked lakers team” as some of you proclaim lol. Honestly, seems like most of you laker fans in here defending 04 didn’t even watch the damn series. probably watched highlights of it on nba tv or something… bc if you watched it, it was CLEAR shaq was the best laker. Clearly… while kobe played like he always does… volume shoot.

they say defense wins championships because most of the time you don’t have a guy shooting 60% from the field. If Shaq was given the ball throughout the game, there would have been no need for a last shot. Which, by the way, the whole “but he is the best player because he can be trusted with the last shot” argument is so utterly irrelevant.. The best player wins by enough points to be on the bench when the buzzer sounds. And Shaq, led the Lakers in +/- EVERY GAME of that series. I believe one game Kobe tied him at -8 during a loss. Other than that, Shaq made, in every single measurable way, a more positive impact for the Lakers. And no, in 2004, Shaq was still the best player on the Lakers. — And Tim Duncan was the best player in the league. Or maybe Kevin Garnett that season. But it sure as hell wasn’t Kobe. Even if you don’t have a bank to take that too, you can get that cashed at Western Union.

My whole thing is that the chemistry among the WHOLE team was off. I’m not one of these typical Laker fans who wants to pin point the destruction of the dynasty on Kobe and Shaq alone. As far as who the best player was on that 04 team it was Shaq without a doubt. Kobe was coming into his own but the alpha was Shaq.

You can not sit there and place the blame on another guy especially when that guy does his part and the 2nd best/most important player on the team shoots 38% from the field all while taking more shots. I don’t care which way you twist it, that 2004 loss falls squarely on Kobe’s shoulders, the same way the 2011 Final loss falls on LeBron not Wade.