DID THE CELTICS SOLVE REBOUNDING WOES?

WEEI
By Ben Rohrbach

Last season, the Celtics ranked dead last in the NBA in total rebounds per game and third-to-last in both rebound differential and rebounding percentage. Not good. Not good at all. So, what did they do to improve those woes?

The short answer: Not much. The long answer? Well, that’s what we hope to explain here. First, the C’s issues.

Rebounds per game: 38.8 (30th)
Offensive rebounds per game: 7.7 (30th)
Defensive rebounds per game: 31.1 (14th!)
Rebounding percentage: 47.3 (28th)
Offensive rebounding percentage: 19.7 (30th)
Defensive rebounding percentage: 72.4 (20th)
Opponents’ rebounds per game: 43.2 (21st)
Rebound differential: -4.4 (28th)

The Celtics ranked in the top half of the NBA in just one category: Defensive rebounding, and even then they’re a middling bunch. The C’s had only two players among the league’s top 50 rebounders — Kevin Garnett (23rd) and Brandon Bass (48th) — while a team like the Lakers owned two of the NBA’s top 10 best window washers.

Things didn’t get much better in the playoffs. The C’s ranked 13th out of 16 teams in rebounds per game, 12th in opponents’ rebounds per game and 14th in rebound differential. And they ranked ninth in defensive rebounding rate, third-to-last in total rebounding rate and dead last in offensive rebounding rate. Bad, worse and terrible.

The good news: Both Garnett and Bass still anchor the C’s backcourt. The bad news: Both Garnett and Bass still anchor the C’s backcourt. While Garnett’s rebounding rate has been in fairly steady decline since he arrived in Boston, he averaged more than a rebound better once he moved to center (8.7 per game) than he did as the team’s starting power forward (7.5 per game). However, the rebounding numbers for Bass changed little during his move from the bench (6.1 in 27.9 minutes per game) to the starting lineup (6.2 in 33.6 minutes per game).

The Celtics feature the best rebounding point guard in the game (Rajon Rondo‘s average of 4.8 boards per game even surpassed 6-foot-6 Kings point Tyreke Evans), and Paul Pierce ranked among the 10 best rebounders at his position last season, but neither helped matters much last season. So, where can the C’s improve?

Ray Allen grabbed just 5.3 percent of the rebounds available to him, ranking him in the lower half of the NBA’s shooting guards who averaged 20 minutes a night, but three of the 16 players guys behind him were Courtney Lee (5.2%), Avery Bradley (5.0%) and Jason Terry (4.2%), who ranked ahead of only Nick Young and Raja Bell in that group.
The 6-foot-9 Jeff Green arrived in Boston averaging six boards a night, and then grabbed half as many over 26 games in a C’s uniform. However, if he reverts to the rebounding form from his days of Thunder, he should offer an upgrade over Mickael Pietrus as Pierce’s backup — but don’t count on him to shore up the four in that regard behind Bass.

After all, when it comes down to it, the majority of a team’s rebounds come from those four and five positions. The departed JaJuan Johnson and Sean Williams never played enough to make an impact, and the trio of Jermaine O’Neal, Greg Stiemsma and Ryan Hollins each owned rebounding rates of 14 percent or worse, all falling to the bottom half of the NBA’s centers.

Nowhere to go but up from there, right? Well, yes and no. If Chris Wilcox can pick up where he left off, his return should help, considering he was snatching 6.0 rebounds in just 21.0 minutes per game during the month of February. For a guy who once averaged 7.5 rebounds a night over two-plus seasons in Seattle during the mid-2000′s, Wilcox was just hitting his stride before his season-ending heart surgery. However, new addition Jason Collins has consistently ranked among the league’s worst rebounding centers. Collins is the new Hollins.

That leaves first-round draft picks Jared Sullinger and Fab Melo. Certainly, the former should earn more minutes behind Bass than the latter does at center. Sullinger’s averages of 8.3 and 8.6 rebounds per game in the Orlando and Las Vegas summer leagues ranked second and sixth, respectively. In college, the 6-foot-9 power forward ranked among the top 50 in total (9.2), defensive (6.1) and offensive (3.1) rebounds per game as well as defensive rebounding percentage (23.9%). Meanwhile, the 7-foot Melo didn’t rank among the top 100 in a single category.

When you consider the Celtics are relying on two guys returning from heart surgery and an unproven rookie with a history of back problems to shore up their rebounding woes, it seems the glass could be a pain in the C’s ass once again. Then again, IF Green and Wilcox revert to their old selves, IF Sullinger lives up to the hype and IF a full season of Garnett and Bass as the starting frontcourt provides stability in terms of rebounding schemes, that quintet could be a marked improvement from the one that included O’Neal, Stiemsma and Hollins a season ago.

112288

The good news: Both Garnett and Bass still anchor the C’s backcourt. The bad news: Both Garnett and Bass still anchor the C’s backcourt.

The good news is that this will be Bass' second year playing alongside KG. The bad news is that these two are our frontcourt, not our backcourt. Details, details, details...

I'm going to go on record, right now, as saying our defensive % will go up this year due to the presence of the 2nd unit's frontcourt: Green, Sully and Wilcox. I was a big fan of Steamer (talk about an over-achiever! 4th on the depth chart at the start of the season, never played in the NBA and he came in and did the job) but rebounding was not his forte. As with most shotblockers (Russell being the biggest, most notable exception) their rebounding will suffer as they give up their position underneath to go and try and block the shot, and so it was with Steamer. Hollins was a 6-month old Great Dane. He had the size and energy, it was just undirected, uncontrolled and unfocused. When Jermaine O'Neal played he didn't rebound either.

As this article points out, Jeff Green should be an advantage over Pietrus. Wilcox will be a plus over Steamer (on the boards) and Sully, I predict, will be a board-monster. He loves to board, he's a student of the art and he's big enough to keep players on his back and out of the box.

I don't expect our offensive rebounding to improve much since Doc's philosophy is "fall back on defense". Could athletic players like Joseph or Xmas or Green disrupt the other team's rhythm by attacking the O-boards? Sure, except that I don't expect the first two players to see much court time and the extent and nature of Green resurgence remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, I believe it is undeniable that our rebounding (which was our single biggest weakness last year) should improve next season, perhaps even dramatically, and that's a very good thing. We were only an undermanned, dinged up and exhausted 2nd half away from the Finals without it.

bob


.

Bob,

My guess is that, by mentioning the Celtics' backcourt in connection with KG and Bass, the author was referencing the DEFENSIVE backcourt, as in the last line of defense.

I continue to believe that too many people are looking at one player in a time in assessing the Celtics' rebounding performance. The best rebounding techniques are usually teamwork affairs, and I'm hoping expanded training camp and practice time will facilitate some in-depth grounding on how to cooperate with one another in rebounding action.

Sam

I think....I hope what I am about to say is executed by the Celtics.

Two things will help the Celtics this year in offense and defense rebounding.

1) We are more athletic and have better speed this year. This will allow the #5 and #4 position to hang around the rim more to get more offense rebounds verses high tailing get back to play defense.

2) We are more athletic in our guard/foreward position and that in turn will help them box out and create better defense rebounding chances all around.

We will see!

112288

sam wrote:Bob,

My guess is that, by mentioning the Celtics' backcourt in connection with KG and Bass, the author was referencing the DEFENSIVE backcourt, as in the last line of defense.

I continue to believe that too many people are looking at one player in a time in assessing the Celtics' rebounding performance. The best rebounding techniques are usually teamwork affairs, and I'm hoping expanded training camp and practice time will facilitate some in-depth grounding on how to cooperate with one another in rebounding action.

Sam

sam,

Rebounding should be a team effort, you're right, but you also need the horses to pull the wagon. All I was doing was trying to show where our horses have been upgraded. They still need to pull together as a team.

bob

.

Bob,

I caught your intent, and I agree completely. I also believe that, if the horses didn't improve over last year's (and I hope that's not true), better rebounding teamwork could improve the overall team rebounding effort. Personally, I'm hoping that Sullinger's going to becoming a compact board beast and will command enough of opponents' attention to make board life a little better for guys like Wilcox, Green and maybe even Joseph (albeit probably in limited minutes).

Sam

Sully is a wide body who can mix it up to get a rebound. Just a matter of him fitting into the NBA. Time will tell.

112288

112288,

It's been such a long summer of expectation that most of us have devoured every word we could lay our hands on about the Celtics. In fact, you've provided a lot of them. It's obviously dangerous to form expectations based on what we read. But the two things that most excite me about Sully's rebounding potential are (1) the almost Russellian fascination he has with the physics of rebounding and (2) the way he applies those precepts to his rebound positioning game. I don't believe it is outside the realm of reality that he might wind up mentoring players older than himself in terms of rebound positioning.

Sam

[quote]Not sure if we actually solved the rebounding problems but from my perspective there is only one way to go and thats up. Don't think we could do much worse in that department. Overall athleticsm will definitely help improve this area along with younger players that have the energy. I think we move up to the middle of the pack this year statistically. Of course I think I was wrong one time.