Clearly they are all afraid of Batum. He's the new designated rebounder. Those are HIS boards. Get in his way and he'll stuff your ass in the hurt locker.
You could have went with the much easier form of punishment that he has been seen doing... but this is okay too. lol.
Rebounding was my main concern of pairing Lopez with Aldridge. They are both quite poor rebounders. A lot of posters talked all summer how Lopez helps the team rebound but guys like Hickson only steal them for themselves. Hickson was the NBA's 7th best rebounder. I think you have to do more than just steal boards from teammates to do that. Well lets see how this continues to plays out. If Batum is leading our team in rebounding that is a bad thing.
Have you ever seen LMA crash the boards with effort? I honestly can't remember a time where he has with purpose; ya know to actually attempt to smash in there and assert himself to grab a board.
Well I guess we can review in maybe 20 games? I mean there have been times when shaq didn't grab 6 boards, and he was a rebounding beast. I would like a larger sample size before we declare how Lopez and Aldridge work together.
We can look at their historical averages. Aldridge has a career total rebounding percentage of 13.2 and Lopez TRB% is 12.9. I'd expect both continue at somewhat close to their historic averages which will likely make us a terrible rebounding team. For comparison last year Hickson had 20.7. Camby had between 22-24 when he was here which was exceptional. Lopez best year was in 2009-10 at 14.2 while Aldridge best year was actually last season at 14.0.
Dammit Mags, you said we were the top rebounding team in the league based on preseason. I had my heart set on that.
That will change this season. Although Aldridge and Lopez may have had lower rebounding %, their were positive over the players they faced. Meaning, they box out and give opportunities for their teammates to get rebounds. I still believe we will be one of the top rebounding teams in the league. Top 5 and I'm sticking to it!
I don't care who gets the rebounds. If Batum averages 10 rpg and Lopez, Aldridge and TRob are all in the 8 rpg range, as long as our TEAM out rebounds our opponents, that's all that matters. So far, we have a sample size of 1. I won't be overly concerned until we start to see an actual trend. We also got out rebounded by Phoenix in the preseason, but totally dominated all our other oppnonents (Utah twice, the Clippers twice, Sacramento and Golden State). Let's give it a few more games before we go all Chicken Little. BNM
I have never looked at the preseason as any merit to how the season is going to go. But, if Batum is getting 10 and those 4 are getting 8 per, that's only 42 rebounds for the entire game. That would be only 3 rebounds more than we had on Wednesday, and 4 less rebounds than the entire PHX team.
I think the sample size of 7 preseason games is at least as valid as the regular season sample size of 1 game, especially the last few preseason games when our opponents were playing their starters more minutes. So, you assume all other players get zero rebounds? Our starting guards have a combined career average of 6 rpg. That get's us up to 48. Throw in a couple for our other backup bigs, and we're over 50 rpg - which is right where we were in preseason and would put us among the top teams in the league. Also, remember, more rebounds for us means fewer for our opponents. Phoenix outrebounded us 47-39. Bump ours up to 42 and that brings their's down to 44 and things are a lot less lopsided. But again that was a single game. I'm not worried - yet. BNM
Good point on the flip, for some reason I didn't register that (we get more - they get less. Was focused on pure numbers.) Though, what's really disturbing is that after Batum's 13, the next highest was Matthews at 5. So yeah, I could see how the improvement will be high. But our defense needs more work than our rebounding.
After only 1 or 2 games played for each team, only 6 out of 30 teams are left without a W. Yet only one team is 2-0
I believe rebounding is part of defense. Allowing the other team fewer offensive rebounds results in less shots. Less shots results in lower opportunities to score. There is no mistake that when we are averaging 50+ a game, the opponent attempts drop drastically. Also, what happens if you play a solid 24 seconds of defense, only to give up an offensive board? It will deflate you... Our #1 priority is to out rebound our opponent. It will help our defense and offense. That doesn't mean one player needs to be a +10, but the entire team work together and rebound as a team!
