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Our shots are not going in more and their shots are. Very much like my 4 yo son missing the toilet bowl more often than his 4 yo girl cousin that almost can't miss.
The players besides Dwight are too fixated on leaking out early for easy scores. I think Harden and Parsons are especially guilty of this. Also Jones doesn't put effort into boxing out every defensive possession.
We go for a number of fancy blocks, which (1) take us out of offensive rebounding position and (2) go right back in someone's face or out of bounds. It's ugly, but more effective if we play great position defense and block shots softly to either the blocker himself or a teammate. Asik is great at both positioning and strategically going for blocks. And guess what, he has not been playing this year. On the flip side, the fancy blocks can intimidate certain players, and I have seen some opponents miss some pretty easy ones around the basket due to the intimidation, which lowers their FG%.
where are you getting those stats from OP? nba.com says we are a poor o-reb team and a good d-reb team. http://stats.nba.com/leagueTeamGeneral.html?ls=iref%3Anba%3Agnav&pageNo=1&rowsPerPage=30&sortField=OREB&sortOrder=DES
In my opinion, without looking at stats, by just game observation, I think our defensive rebounding gets weak when Dwight goes to the bench. When Dwight goes out we run Jones at the 5 most of the time and teams overpower us with Jones at the 5 and another guy even smaller than Jones (Casspi/Parsons) at the 4. That's your two primary rebounding spots, the power spots that we are undersized at when Dwight goes to the bench. Combine this fact with what rocketsfan4 brought up about Jones playing for the block instead of the board and you have a recipe for being at the bottom in defensive rebounding...although with Dwight on the floor we are probably first in the league in the rebounding percentage. I would think there is statistical evidence to back this up. Perhaps popcorn machine, etc.
You can't rate a team's rebounding performance by looking simply at rebounds per game. Those totals depend on non-rebounding things like pace and number of field goals missed. Look at this instead: http://stats.nba.com/leagueTeamGene...r=DES&MeasureType=Four Factors&PerMode=Totals
stats I didn't realize it was this complicated figuring out rebounding stats.[ Okay, here are the relevant rebounding stats for the Rockets: Stats re: total number of rebounds per game Total Rebounds: 45.2 (7th in the NBA) Defensive Reb: 34.2 (4th in the NBA) Offensive Reb: 10.9 (17th in the NBA) Rebound Percentages (Pct. of rebounds grabbed from total rebound opptys: Total Rebounds: 52% (5th in the NBA) Defensive Reb: 73.7% (21st in the NBA) Offensive Reb: 27% (7th in the NBA) So, I think these numbers mean that: 1. Houston is not a good defensive rebounding team, because while they get a high number of defensive rebounds in a game, they only grab 73.7% of all potential defensive rebounds, which ranks 21st in the NBA. By comparison, the highest percentage in the NBA is 76.7%. 2. Houston is a good offensive rebounding team, because while their total number of offensive rebounds are low (10.9, 17th in NBA), they get 27% of all possible offensive rebounds in a game, ranking 7th in the NBA). http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/team/_/stat/rebounds-per-game/sort/avgDefensiveRebounds
Probably because our bigs have to rotate and cover for our smalls on defense, putting them out of position to grab the rebound.
This is your answer. The perimeter brigade of Harden, Lin and Parsons either never rotate (Harden) or do not fight around picks and swith off way too often (Lin & Parsons). I know that the Rockets are still getting used to the difference between Howard and Asik, and that the team has not been long together, but the lack of IQ and effort on the perimeter is what is keeping the Rockets from being a top 2-3 seed.
I think it's more complicated then that. Because Houston still grabs a lot of defensive rebounds, 34.2 per game, which ranks them 4th in the NBA. Their rebounding percentage is 21st in the NBA, but that percentage is within about 1% of 10 teams that are above them, which means a good stretch of rebounding could easily put them near the Top 10 in defensive rebounding percentage. In other words, Houston may not be that bad a defensive rebounding team, and is more of an average to above average rebounding team. Still, a question I'm curious about is why their total defensive rebounds is very high (4th in NBA) while their rebounding percentage is basically average. The answer is either (a) the other teams shoot a lot and therefore, even if shooting at a high percentage, they will still miss a lot of shots; or,(b) the other team shoots a typical amount of shots, but misses a lot, presumably due to good defense. Given that the Rockets play at really fast pace, I'd probably go with (a) as the answer. If that's the case, we'd need to know more information before concluding that it's bad perimeter defense that makes Houston an average defensive rebounding team. Questions I'd like to know: what kinds of rebounds are the Rockets not getting on defense? Are they those long rebounds off of 3 point shots? Or are they getting beat inside for rebounds? Too tired to do further research, but, if I had to guess from watching most of the games this season, I'd have to say that teams, given the faster pace, gain more possessions and put up more three point shots than they usually would against other teams. So Houston loses defensive rebounds because rebounds from 3 point shots often come out long, and right back into an offensive player's hands, and there's little Houston can do about some of those. So, let me suggest that Houston's seemingly poor defensive rebounding may be a by-product of its fast paced offense, rather than because of poor perimeter defense. Or, if a mixture of both, it's the pace of the offense that's the most important factor.
