I'm not totally sure this deserves it's own thread, but I didn't know where else to post it. Nevertheless, I thought it was worth sharing. Mike D’Antoni reveals biggest weakness Houston Rockets need to address Space City Scoop by Josh Paredes In a recent podcast interview with Craig Ackerman for RocketsCast Live, Mike D’Antoni was asked about the biggest area that needs to be improved upon for the Houston Rockets to be more successful this season. Without skipping a beat, Coach D’Antoni pointed to defensive rebounding as the biggest weakness of last season’s team, stating, “Well the biggest thing is our defensive rebounding. A little bit our offensive rebounding, but mostly our defensive rebounding.” ... When asked about what led to such a dramatic dropoff in defensive rebounding between two seasons ago and last season, Mike offered up a few explanations: “For me, most of it’s personnel. You lose Trevor Ariza, who is long and lanky, and gets rebounds. Then Eric (Gordon) started. Eric’s kind of on the ground — he’s not a big leaper. Each guy individually fell off a little bit…Danuel House was here and then he wasn’t here. He’s kind of that athletic three that we need to get rebounds.” Read more here...
Russ should be able to help the starting unit. House, Clark and Chandler/Nene all have to step up. Clint may need to grab 1 or 2 extra defensive boards a game too. Please work on boxing out this preseason and bring good habits into the season. However they do it, this must get fixed. I'm glad that MDA has identified defensive rebounding as the teams biggest weakness. Please fix it.
The nice thing about our rebounding problem is that with coaching and players responding to coaching with the right efforts, this issue can be fixed without adding anyone to our roster. Glad to hear MDmA is all over it.
“For me, most of it’s personnel. You lose Trevor Ariza, who is long and lanky, and gets rebounds. Then Eric (Gordon) started. Eric’s kind of on the ground — he’s not a big leaper. Each guy individually fell off a little bit…Danuel House was here and then he wasn’t here. He’s kind of that athletic three that we need to get rebounds.” Classic MDA... skirting all personal responsibility.... "most of Its personnel" ...how about owning it and saying too much small ball is negatively affecting our rebounding... naw better to put it on the loss of Ariza... "House was here then he wasn't here. He’s kind of that athletic three that we need to get rebounds." ...howabout Durrel tried to get cute and stiff arm House so we got screwed for a few weeks before Durrel caved... then House had a few lapses in the playoffs- so I freaked and benched him..."
If you are saying putting the right bodies from our roster on the floor to give us a better opportunity at rebounding - I agree... But if ur saying that MDA can continue to run small ball lineups and the rebounding is gonna fix itself through effort... I disagree... MDA is all about pumping up his offensive efficiencies so he will be viewed as an offensive genius... whether thats at the expense of rebounding, or defense or running starters for unnecessary minutes to inflate those stats or whatever... ..imo
Good to hear this being point of concern for the team. While many, especially the media, believed our offensive style was the cause of our downfall, it always seemed like rebounding was a bigger issue. Our record when outrebounding teams last season was outstanding. Problem was that just wasn't very often.
In 17/18 we finished 4th in defensive rebounding % at 75.0% Tucker played the majority of the minutes at the 4 that year. Not as much as last year, but a significant amount. In fact in the games he started at the 4 in 17/18 our defensive rebound % was BETTER at 77.6% compared to the 75.0% season long number. Some of y’all just can’t fathom a world where MDA isn’t to blame. Losing Ariza and Moute were THE biggest reasons for our defensive rebounding decline.
Explain finishing 4th in defensive rebounding in 17/18 when Tucker played more minutes at the 4 than anyone else on the roster? Fact is back then when we had the right bodies to rebound, he played them, and we rebounded well.
Pretty much. He said it himself. It’s personnel. So it’s not improving the rebounding. It should be bringing in rebounders.
Russ should help with that, but u still got EG at the 3 so yeah, we’ll see what happens EG is a non-existent presence on the boards PJ tries his hardest, but he’s not a beast on the boards every night...he has the occasional high rebound game, and he’s great at boxing out, but he’s 34 and is undersized at his position Harden is a good rebounder for a guard, Russ can rack up rebounds, and Clint will do what he does I’m sorry, but we need a legit starting caliber SF...we have yet to adequately replace Ariza
Team rebounding works better than individual rebounding over the course of a game. It doesn't matter who you have in the game, you can still rebound through systems of boxing out. Sure, we're not going to be the best rebounding team in the league just because we box out, but we'll be effective enough to win (a lot of games) if the team commits to rebounding as a unit.
