So, he averaged more prior to Camby's arrival, and Camby took some rebounds away. I recall Aldridge going for 20/10 over an extended period last season after the Oden/Przy injuries and prior to the Camby trade. Did he suddenly become a worse rebounder when Camby arrived? Or, did his role change, because Camby could actually rebound, while Juwan Howard was a liability?
My thought is he's a poor rebounder in general. Not terrible. Just poor. In terms of rebound percentage, he was 37th in the league (only counting guys who got 500 minutes or more) Again, I don't think he's a terrible rebounder, but I'm not sure what numbers you can throw out there that indicate that he's a good rebounder. I don't think the rebound numbers for 2nd best rebounders on a team is much of a statistic. And no, he didn't have an extended period of 20/10 games. He had eleven 20/10 games all season.
Good for you. The team stats do say that the Blazers have been an elite rebounding team the past two years, and that's with a "poor" rebounding PF who ends up in the top 30 in rebounds both years. Seems like an odd criticism of Aldridge, given the overall effectiveness of the team in terms of overall rebounding.
Your post asks if Aldridge is a "terrible" rebounder. Everybody has said, no, he isn't a "terrible" rebounder. Yet you continue to argue. What is your position? Is he a "good", "poor", "great", "average" rebounder? What is the point of this thread?
We only averaged 2.1 more rebounds per game than our opponents. That's not an elite rebounding team. It's not like he has to be a great rebounder to be a good player. I'm not sure why you're crusading against people who think he's not very good at rebounding.
Really? Are you sure about that? How about scoring? That number is 38th. http://www.nba.com/statistics/playe...itScope=GAME&qualified=N&yearsExp=-1&splitDD= http://www.nba.com/statistics/playe...itScope=GAME&qualified=N&yearsExp=-1&splitDD= Looked like 34th to me. In case you haven't been paying attention, in order to be an all star level power forward, you usually have to be top 3 in your conference, minimum. Last time I looked, both teams that made the finals had an all star level power forward performing on their team. Not a 7th to 8th best in the western conference alone. We have already been over this. If you went through the listings of Western Conference Power Forwards from last year, the highest he could have possibily been rated was 6th in this conference alone. That doesn't even consider the whole league, and to top it off, there are other players who are comparable to what he brings to the table. Every single one of those power forwards listed ahead of him (Gasol, Boozer, Nowitzki, Stoudemire, Duncan) make the playoffs every year. That means against those teams you are going into the game at a disadvantage. When the difference is 2 to 4 rebounds per game, that is 2 to 4 more possessions per game that the other team gets to try to score. When you are playing in games decided by a point, that is huge.
LaMarcus's rebounding does not correlate to wins strongly; in fact, when he gets 9+ total rebounds in a game (31 times last season), the Blazers were 18-13 (.580) -- below their winning average of .610. When he gets 10+ rebounds, it goes up slightly (.583) but really, there's no strong indicator that LMA getting more rebounds actually helps the team win more. What does seem to correlate strongly is Field Goals made, regardless of percentage. If LMA hits 8 or more shots in a game (this happened 39 times), the Blazers were 27-12 (.692). This is the second-strongest correlation. Of course, the better he shoots, the better the Blazers do: 37 times he shot .500 or better, and the Blazers went 28-9 (.756). This is the strongest correlation of LMA's game to Blazer wins. But the FGM stat being the #2 correlation surprised me, until I remembered that Roy's AST stats were also a strong correlation, about as strong as LMA's FGM correlation. I can't know, but I wonder if Roy-to-LaMarcus assists are the key here. Regardless, you hear "LMA hits 8 shots" and "Blazers win!" in the same sentence much more than "LMA grabs 10 rebounds" and "Blazers win!".
ESPN has the players who actually qualified for leading those categories. Kevin Martin averaged 20.6 ppg in 45 games. Whoopedy doo! http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/scoring-per-game http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/rebounds/sort/avgRebounds Aldridge 31st in scoring among those who qualified in amount of games played, and 23rd in rebounding.
By my calculation, we were 7th in the league last season. I guess it could just be semantics, but I don't think that means we're elite. True, we were 1st the year before...but Aldridge's rebound percentage was similar both years. And like blazerboy30 asked above...what do you want to hear? How would you describe his rebounding? Nobody is saying he's a terrible rebounder. Some people, me for example, believe he's a bit below average. Is that so bad?
It is nearly identical to the Lakers (+2.134), but much less than a team like OKC (+2.84) or ORL (+3.23). That said, the Lakers won a championship without an elite rebounding squad, or a fast pace (they were average), or even an average FG% (they were below average). Hell, they were below average in FTA's. Their FTA differential? +2.54 a game. That's +1.94 points per game (when multiplied by the FT%) from the line, which accounts for about 40% of their point differential (+4.72 ppg). Anyway, I ramble.
If Aldridge wants to ever sniff an All-Star game he needs to put up 20/10 type numbers. Until that time comes, he can continue to play his brand of basketball; face up jumpers and getting outworked and out-bruted by his opponent. He has 1 game about every 5 games where he really brings it, plays hard on the boards, gets tough. Thats usually when someone in the media calls him out for being soft and he decides to do his best impression of a man. Like someone brought up earlier, 11 double-doubles in a season from your starting 4 averaging 38 minutes a game aint gonna cut it. Shoot Tim Duncan is old and crusty and he can put up better #'s than LaMarcus in much less minutes.
