BTW, personally one of the dumbest arguments I've ever seen on this site was SF was taking rebounds from the big men.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you made that argument, but people used to say that SF took rebounds from YM last year. Anyway, I usually agree with Calvin on his criticism of the guards, particularly not shooting the mid range jumper enough, and not running the fast break properly. But for him to say they rebound to pad their stats is just wrong. Its not like its exactly easy to go in and get rebounds with big men in the west when you're 6'3" and 6'5". I mean, even if they are padding their stats, its still pretty amazing to average that many rebounds at their sizes, particularly SF. I usually associate padding stats with getting buckets in garbage time.
He didn't exactly say they were padding their stats....but that was the implication. I realize that it's a pretty athletic feat for Steve to rack up the rebounding numbers that he does, but Calvin's argument......and I've heard others argue the same thing......is that if Steve is hanging back to get rebounds instead of flying back to the opposite end of the court, it's indicitive of the fact that we have absolutely no fast break mentality. Until we change that mentality, we'll always be a poor fast break team. If we changed that mentality, Steve could probably replace some of his rebounding numbers with added points and assists.
How many teams have two top 10 rebounders? Assuming each team has 2 starting big men, that's 58. 15th is at about 75 percentile (way above average), while 31st is at around 48 percentile (slightly below average). The two combined is NOT worse than average. Let me say it again: Our big men are not worse than average rebounders. That said, I don't agree with people who say that any guard could've got that many rebounds like Francis. Francis is a talented rebouder no doubt. And I don't agree that his rebounding is the main reason why their fastbreak is so poor. It's what you do after you get the rebound. Francis is just not a fast decision maker.
Are you serious? There are twenty nine teams in the league, each having a power forward and a center. From that we have a pool of 58 starting big men. The median big man would then be 29th in rebounding. Therefor we have one well above average and one about (very slightly below) average rebounder. That means, our big men are no worse than average. Edit: Or you can just read Easy's post above mine which says basically the same thing.
