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Rebounding - How Do We Improve?

Avery

Avery

Well-Known Member
7 games into the season, one thing is sufficiently clear: we're a very poor rebounding team. In fact, we rank last in the league in most meaningful rebound categories including overall rebounding and contested rebounding.

This is where the loss of Crowder and Favors for shooting helps and hurts. It's probably also why guys like Bradley might get more PT than normal as we simply allow too many second chances that are costing us in the box score.

There aren't just elite rebounders sitting in FA so it's something we're simply going to have to either deal with or adjust to prior to the trade deadline. No matter what happens, we simply can't keep getting wiped at the glass repeatedly if we ever want to lift a trophy.
 
Stop standing around and letting the board come to you. Box out and give effort.

That's it in my eyes. This is nothing more than laziness. Are we going to be a great rebounding team? No but 11 then 18 offensive rebounds is unacceptable.
 
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Something like this may help...
 
The biggest thing is obviously getting good rotation to Gobert’s man when Gobert has to help. That hasn’t been good, and frankly our guys are a little small so this needs to be executed really well.

I think Gobert can do a little better boxing out some space for others to get rebounds.
 
One thing is clear, if we can’t rebound at the end of games we won’t win the close games. Our defense showed up big down the stretch but was nullified because of all the second chance buckets they got. There was a stretch where we’d be down three, we were scoring every time to cut it to 1 point then we’d get a stop only to give up an offensive rebound and putback had the jazz cleaned up the boards from 5 minutes and on we win that game.
 
I think "how we improve" is more of a theoretical, mental masturbation exercise. We can talk about effort all we want, but these guys aren't rebounders. We weren't really playing with rebounders last year, either. Aside from 12 or so minutes that Gobert and Favors were together, we didn't have a decent rebounder on the floor 1-4. It became apparent in a number of close games where we lost because we couldn't secure a defensive board in the closing minutes and we got beat by hustle rebounders. This is roughly the same this year. I've mentioned the idea of a four needing to be a true four that rebounds. Obviously the way our summer worked out, Bojan was much better than Mirotic, so you roll with what you've got -- and here we are.

The bigger issue, however, may not be our total rebounds. We may appear superficially as an okay rebounding team. I don't know what we were last year, but if I recall we weren't a bad rebounding team. However, where this does show up is when there's another team where they've got a hustle rebound player like a Harrell. In the macro, we may rebound sufficiently, but we have an exploitable weakness that does't really show up in the numbers -- just like last year -- where we may lose a few games down the stretch because we can't secure a defensive board. Again, we can go back to fundamentals, but guys who are good at many things often make mistakes that have to do with fundamentals. We recognize boxing out as being a problem because we don't have guys that secure rebounds at baseline, so the lack of fundamentals tends to shine through. If we had dudes who grabbed boards, those lack of fundamentals wouldn't be as prominent. What I'm trying to say is that we suck at grabbing boards because, outside of Gobert, our guys can't grab boards. It misleads us because when we don't grab the boards, we hunt down the reason for it, and we assume it can simply be fixed by boxing out.

Our current structure of our team is predicated on the idea that hopefully we have enough firepower that we are less frequently put in the position of having 1-2 rebounds cost us the game. But not having a real rebounding option does have its costs. This is why sitting around overvaluing an injured Exum becomes more painful -- because of opportunity costs on guys like a JaMychal Green or MM.

Release teh Bolomboy!!!1
 
I remember playing for my JV basketball team... we weren't awfully talented but we won 70% of our games and would continually beat the varsity team in practice.

We didn't have much athleticism or height. I was the starting center at 6'4.

We played good zone defense, often ran a full court press and we BOXED OUT. Our coach loved it and made it a point to say he wanted a missed shot to bounce on the floor multiple times because everyone is boxing out and the other team has zero chance of getting a rebound.

We often played teams with taller guys. And so we shot LOTS of foul shots because they would either A) get called for going over our backs when trying to grab a rebound or B) They'd blatantly try and push us out of position.

Point is, boxing out is really, really simple. if a bunch of 9th and 10th graders can be taught it then the Utah Jazz players can all learn it as well.
 
Very minor consideration here, but is Stanton Kidd a better rebounder than Niang?
 
kabenac said:
We didn't have much athleticism or height. I was the starting center at 6'4.

We played good zone defense, often ran a full court press and we BOXED OUT. Our coach loved it and made it a point to say he wanted a missed shot to bounce on the floor multiple times because everyone is boxing out and the other team has zero chance of getting a rebound.

We often played teams with taller guys. And so we shot LOTS of foul shots because they would either A) get called for going over our backs when trying to grab a rebound or B) They'd blatantly try and push us out of position.

Point is, boxing out is really, really simple. if a bunch of 9th and 10th graders can be taught it then the Utah Jazz players can all learn it as well.
Click to expand...

I remember reading in Sports Illustrated years ago that there was no reason in the WORLD why a 6 ft 8 inch guy couldn't box out a 6 ft 11 inch guy on a consistent basis! Heck, Charles Barkley and Wes Unseld won rebounding titles and they were both only 6 ft 8 inches tall....because they knew how to BOX OUT!
 
carolinajazz said:
I remember reading in Sports Illustrated years ago that there was no reason in the WORLD why a 6 ft 8 inch guy couldn't box out a 6 ft 11 inch guy on a consistent basis! Heck, Charles Barkley and Wes Unseld won rebounding titles and they were both only 6 ft 8 inches tall....because they knew how to BOX OUT!
Click to expand...
Yes, Barkley was 6’8”. Smfh.
 
Bawse Dawg said:
Play Brantley
Click to expand...
I think he could easily get Niang's minutes. The challenge with Niang is that he gets floor time for being a smart system player, which really isn't something we need ATM.
 
It terms of simplicity in basketball. Boxing out is as simple as dribbling or putting your hands up on defense. I don't get why the players on this team don't get that. It's frustrating to watch for sure.
 
The Kings game it was simply ball watching at an inopportune time... last night Montrez bullied his way in. 2 issues in particular... if Rudy has to help someone has to box his guy or rotate and touch. Royce was all over Kawhi and he's probably the second best rebounder on the team... so he's kinda occupied.

If Conley doesn't find his game (I believe he will) then he's a liability in the closing lineups as he's small and will be hunted and he's not gonna go get a rebound. May have to close with DM, Ingles, Royce, Bojan, Rudy... doesn't help a ton... but this is why I kinda wanted that power forward sized 4. Jeff has been fine for the minimum but he's bad on defense... Having a guy like Jamychal Green would go so far... we had no shot to get him, but that's the guy we need to round out the roster.
 
carolinajazz said:
I remember reading in Sports Illustrated years ago that there was no reason in the WORLD why a 6 ft 8 inch guy couldn't box out a 6 ft 11 inch guy on a consistent basis! Heck, Charles Barkley and Wes Unseld won rebounding titles and they were both only 6 ft 8 inches tall....because they knew how to BOX OUT!
Click to expand...

For real. Rodman is only 6'7 and is one of the greatest rebounders and defenders ever.

Here's a video for the Jazz:

 
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