Yao needs to concentrate on Defense and Rebounding

You know what? Sometimes I have the idea that Yao should put more efforts on rebounding than offense.

 

When Yao concentrates on rebounding, he usually plays tougher, which makes him much more effective on both ends of the floor. When he shies away from the board, his overall game suffers from that softness.

 

I'm not sure how accurate that is... Yao's had several double digit rebounding games this season where he scored less than 20pts..

 

I loved the collective effort to rebound tonight, top to bottom. They need to work like that every night. Yao was clearly more aggressive. There were a few plays where he gave an extra effort or got his hand in there to tip the ball out. He doesn't always do that.

 

don't overblow this. what is yao's reb rate this season? his career? reb. isn't something one can easily improve on. actually it's probably one of the toughest things to improve for a basketball player.

tinman, i am guessing you're about the same age of mine. i'm a little surprised you dug out your own old thread. vanity is sin.

 

yao played really well tonight.

but his lack of aggressiveness around the rim still irks me. it's gonna haunt us when we play more physical teams.

 

and 2-3 where he scored less than 18pts..

 

This isn't like the rubix cube when it came out in the 80's. When yao scores, he rebounds and blocks shots, when he doesn't score, you can hang it up for defense and rebounding. As a center it shouldn't be that way, but with yao, its th easiest puzzle in the book.

 

Totally agree, he hangs his head far too often...he can help in other ways when his shot is not falling....specifically on D and Rebounds.

DD

 

his reboudning tonight should be around 10-12 if it was the usual yao..

but he fought rebounds with scola and other rockets a couple times LMAO....

but i love the stat w**** yao though, a lot of times, no rockets seem to go fight the rebounds anyways.

 

I thought this was an interesting observation. I wanted to check this for Yao by looking at how his per-minute stats correlated with eachother over the last couple seasons, and comparing those numbers with another well-established pivot. Tim Duncan's the prototype pivot in today's NBA, so I used him for the comparison.

Here's how various stats correlated to PTS and SHOTS for Yao and Duncan over last season and so far this season. Here, PTS is points scored and SHOTS is an estimate for total shot attempts (FGA + .44*FTA). All the stats were adjusted to per-minute for obvious reasons:

Code:

[B]Correlation to PTS[/B]
         GP    TREB     DREB     OREB     BLK    T/O
Yao      75    .40      .19      .39      .03    .01   
Duncan   97    .17      .06      .22     -.15   -.20


[B]Correlation to SHOTS[/B]
         GP    TREB     DREB     OREB     BLK    T/O
Yao      75    .46      .27      .40      .19   -.08
Duncan   97    .14     -.05      .36     -.02   -.17

A more stats savvy person than myself could probably comment on how significant those numbers are. Here's my interpretation:

It does seem to confirm your observations, at least for the rebounding. The more Yao scores, or the more shots he attempts, the better his rebounding numbers. For Duncan, the relationship isn't as strong. In particular, the defensive rebounding for Duncan had almost no relationship with his scoring or shot attempts, but with Yao there is a clearly positive relationship. For blocked shots, there is a positive relationship for Yao between that and shot attempts. For Duncan, not really.

 

I think it was more about Atlanta being overmatched by his size. If we were playing Memphis again, Yao would once again be frustrated and have less than 10 boards. Sometimes, it's just about the matchups.

 

When you are 7 feet 6 inches tall it is not about matchups, but rather the effort.

DD

 

Durvasa- I didn't have to pull up that stat chart because I chart things like that myself when I watch the game. Its really easy and very apparent. If u don't believe me, go see how many 12 pt 12 reb games yao will have. Or go check and see how many 15pt 12 reb games he will have. You will see 20pts and 10 plus rebs, but when he doesn't score, he act like that's the only way he can help the team.

 

Yao never really fights his teammates for rebounds so that has hurt his numbers over his career. If you look at all the top rebounders, they never let some small guard come in and take rebound from them.

Most importantly, it is the tough rebounds that matter. I think Landry is the best at snatching ones that aren't gimmes. Anyone can pad their stats and grab a rebound when nobody is around or off a missed free throw. It's another to do it in traffic. If I were to keep a stat, I would differentiate between a gimme rebound and one you had to work for.

 

What an utter rubbish observation, Yao has done well against Grizz and any traditional centers out there in the past and will do so again in the future. You can't past judgement based on 1 game.

 

You can call out Yao for a lot of things, but not playing hard shouldn't be one of them. That is blasphemy.

It's time you people give credit to the other team. Memphis might suck as a team but they have the bodies to stop Yao. Darko and Gasol did a great job last night have done a great job on him previously. Stop making up crap that Yao dogs it when he's not scoring well. Could it be that the Memphis bigs that stopped him from scoring also had an effect on his ability to rebound and block shots? The answer is yes.

You're going to tell me that "effort" is the reason why Yao struggles against centers that can shoot mid range jumpers and are quicker to get rebounds? Please. Like the "Yao is what he is" thread, y'all have to realize that with Yao comes great games like tonight and poor games like last night specifically because of who he's playing against. But calling him out for not trying is just ludicrous.

 

STFU rookie!

 

It's easy to overestimate the importance of height when it comes to rebounding. According to basketball-reference.com, there have only been 8 players in NBA history who were at least 7'4 and played at least 500 games. Of these 8 players, only Muresan had a higher career rebound% than Yao, and his wasn't significantly higher.

There are a lot of factors that go into rebounding besides effort, and I think height is just one of them: instincts, reflexes, agility, fundamentals, strength, good hands, height. Yao is very much lacking when it comes to instincts, reflexes, agility, and his hands (ability to catch and secure the ball). Still, he's immense and difficult for other players to push out of the way, so he'll get a decent share of rebounds on average. But he'll never be a great rebounder because of his limitations in a number of areas.

 

HECK YES !!

I will tell you that Yao gets down on himself when he is not scoring and stops giving total effort all over the floor.

Yao is a dow jones player....when he is up, he is fantastic, when he is down, he struggles.....

Yao could do more than what he is doing if he were mentally tougher...if he concentrated on rebounding when he is struggling with his shot he would be a much much much better player.

DD