Well when I was browsing the box scores of the Mavericks losses this season I noticed that in most of the losses it was Josh Howard who struggled not Dirk. So that made me think how good would Dallas be w/o Howard? I mean they'd still be a playoff team, but would they be contenders or even the top team in the Southwest? Now I know Dirk is obviously the most valuable player on the team but I think Howard is a lot more valuable then people think.
They would obviously still be good, but not as good. Jerry Stackhouse and a couple others would fill in and do fine but he's a big hustler/defender/well everything really...Would they be at their current level without him? No.
Terry and Harris would probably benefit from Howard being out as they've struggled with their rhythm this year. Not enough shots imo.
If we didn't have Howard, we would have somebody else. Perhaps not somebody as good as Howard, but we'd have somebody (and not just Stack, imo). But assuming we lost him to injury, knock on wood, we would have some troubles. However, I think we would actually still be a top 5 team, at least. There was a point in the season where JHo went out for 2 weeks, and Stack was pretty great. The thing is that he is getting older and less durable. I definitely couldn't see playing Stack or George every game all year.We would still be pretty damn good, though.
