Well we only started PJ for half the season last year so presumably he had more juice to go after boards when he played Also Ariza and Luc were + rebounders at the other forward spot
Everyone has an amazing record if you take one of their worst features and isolate the games where they do it best. What do you have to give up to get that rebounding edge? Clint and Harden are elite rebounders for their positions. Tucker, Shumpert and Paul are not good. But if you're a top 5 offense and a top 10 defense, you have the necessary ingredients for a championship. The other thing is, just by reducing Tucker's minutes and having Faried backup the PF and C with significant minutes, that's a boost to our rebounding without having to sacrifice a more key component in defense.
SF is a problem, Gordon and Shumpert are both poor rebounders, so it might be necessary to move Tucker to SF and move Faried up and sacrifice some defense and spacing. Would not be an issue if we had even an average SF but sadly that's not the case.
We're 27th worst defense. There is no defense to sacrifice. There is no winning it without being in the top 10 the rest of the way at least. I just don't get how people can't see there is no problem bigger than the defense problem. Defensive rebounding is a part of defense. Defense is half the game. We're 27th at half the game.
If we want to dominate the boards we need to start both Faried and Tucker. Shumpert hasn't played enough games here for me to evaluate the difference he would make on defense, but he doesn't shoot or rebound much. What I do know is that Tucker gets twice as many rebounds as Gordon and Shumpert and has had 8 steals in the last 2 games. I want him starting. As far as Faried and Gordon go its not like Gordon scores a lot more, and he averages 7 less rebounds a game. I think its in our best interest starting Faried over Gordon. Just to compare the two I am only using Faried's stats as a Rocket, which is only 15 games. Gordon averages 16.3 PTS a game and Faried 15.8 PTS a game. Gordon FG% .391 Faried FG% .602 Gordon 3PT% .324 Faried 3PT% .462 Sure, Faried has only averaged less than 1 3PTA a game with us, but I say give him the green light if you want to make him more of a threat deep, but even without doing that he puts up almost as many points as Gordon without having to take near as many shots. I just can't find enough logical reasoning to see anyone other than Clint, Tucker, Faried, James, and Paul as our starting 5.
If this is our playoff offense, Kenneth Faried longsteps, we are in more trouble than I thought. He can't start without a three ball in this system. It's just a fact.
Having a Forward that can knock down threes is not situational, it is vital to the integrity of our entire system, and James Harden as a player. It is key to all our success. There is no way in hell that Mike is going to abandon it. We might see a couple minutes of Manimal and Clint, but that's all we'll see going forward.
