Carter Praises Howard’s Improved Offense

AP Photo/John Raoux

Tania Ganguli of the Orlando Sentinel was at practice today. When Vince Carter wasn’t busy hitting world record shots, he had time to talk to the media.

Carter had this to say about Howard’s improving offense.

“He’s now developing more moves,” Carter said. “His ability to shoot the ball from the logo now. His left-hand jump hook is looking a lot better. Confidence. He works on his game. We feed him the ball, we believe in him. He’s going to make for a great center.”

Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy also noticed that the media has been a little more quiet in their criticism of Howard with some exceptions.

“It is starting to quiet a little,” Van Gundy said. “We’ve been on national TV a lot lately and more people are watching and going, ‘Oh, he is getting better. I’m seeing more on the offensive end.’ If you’re watching us you see him with a much more variety of moves, being able to finish with both hands. You see it. For a lot of people who haven’t seen us a lot they just assume he’s the same guy he was a year ago and that he’s not developing.

“… He’s playing with a lot more patience, he’s using a lot more variety in terms of offensive moves. His free throw shooting has gotten a lot better.”

You can read more from Ganguli here.

Anyone who has consistently watch the Magic can see the improvement in Howard’s offensive game. Not only is he showing off his jump-shot, but he’s used to finesse game to score against bigger, stronger defenders like Shaquille O’Neal and Kendrick Perkins.

Van Gundy said that Howard is currently playing the best basketball of his career, showing great patience that he used to lack on the offensive end. Howard was rewarded for his improved play, winning Eastern Conference Player of the Week yesterday. Howard has averaged 28.0 points per game, 16.3 rebounds per game and 5.3 blocks per game since the All-Star Break.

HTD will have more on the Howard’s improved play and the undeserved criticism he receives on a regular basis.

(Andrew Melnick is Howard the Dunk’s lead blogger and a contributor at NFL Mocks Subscribe to his RSS feed, add him on Twitter to follow him daily and you can get the HTD app here).