What do you consider small ball? Dwight Howard is 6'9, Kev is 6'9, Lebron is 6'8.
Small ball hasn't anything to do with height, but how many guards/wings you put on the floor while playing fast, uptempo, and creating spacing by sacrificing interior defense - this is traditionally done by playing a three-guard or even four-guard rotation with a PF/C or a power-forward at center. The point to this is to create a mismatch for opponents with the goal of outscoring your opponent while sacrificing defense,
or to correct a mismatch created/initiated by an opponent.
Dwight Howard playing at center is not effective against smaller lineups that don't play traditional centers or go very small, like the Warriors, because he's not effective defending outside of the interior nor can he space the floor as he only requires a defender when positioned directly under the hoop. The Warriors abused the Rockets when Howard was on the floor during the playoffs by playing Draymond Green at the 5.
Yes, you can play small with Howard on the floor, but in the most likely matchup we'll face in these upcoming finals, is Howard a better option than Tristan Thompson who is an elite PnR/PnP defender? Honestly, in that specific matchup, defensively, he's not. Against the Spurs? Sure, against Golden State, no.
Any trades we make at this point need to address those two specific matchups.
Dwight can guard 5's and 4's.
Dwight can guard centers. Dwight's not guarding modern power-forwards out at the perimeter. He's not even being put into that position, so I'm not sure why you'd think this. He'd get torched. We saw this happen in the playoffs.
Now if your idea of small ball is what the Warriors play then they're the only team (besides a healthy Cavs team and maybe the Spurs) who can get away with playing small ball because of their personnel.
We've been getting rocked by several teams including even the Wizards who've started playing smaller. Let's not pretend that the Warriors are isolated in this, they aren't. Other teams around the league are starting to realize they too can field a team without playing a traditional center and find success against teams/coaches unable to adjust defensively.
With respect to the Warriors though, you've got to take that into consideration. The only point of making a trade at this point would be to improve our chances of winning the Finals. Does Dwight Howard help us against the odds-on favorites to win the championship? Maybe, maybe not.
Look around the league and tell me if a frontline of Lebron, Love and Dwight can't matchup with any lineup small ball or not. I think it can.
Who is concerned about the league, or the regular season for that matter? We have a cakewalk to the NBA Finals. The only relevant matchups are the Spurs, Warriors, and the Thunder. Everyone else isn't really of interest.
It really comes down to what you think small ball is.
I'm kind of scratching my head because what small ball is is not a matter of debate. The question isn't what is small ball, it's how does Dwight Howard help us beat the Warriors?
Can we play him against 90% of the league? Of course, and be dominant. But does he help us against the one or two teams that matter the most? Of that I'm not sure. I could care less about the other squads though - they aren't important.