Do you know what else wins championships? Rebounding

Garnett is not moving as quickly laterally, so he’s slow to get to the defensive rebound. He also has timing problems (see missed layups, as well as the fact that he keeps losing rebounds over his back).

Let’s hope it’s just rust and not physical deterioration as a result of the surgery.

The Celtics have the size, strength and length to out rebound most teams they play against but are not playing physical enough or are hungry enough at times to rebound with other teams.

They have to get tougher, more hungrier and crash the boards as a team to remedy minor rebounding problem they are having!

They also have to reduce the amount of deep jumpers Garnett & Rasheed are taking to help the rebounding cause, since both players when they take such shots are never in vicinity of the basket or in position to go after offensive rebounds.

The C’s have the physical skills and talent to rebounding, but they miss the heart and motivation at times to do so.

This is a mental problem that Doc can easily I think remedy with a good old fashion team meeting.

Garnett and Rasheeds outside shooting are weapons and must be utilized, but they must not over do it since they are our primary big guys along with Perk and need to be low post inside rebounding factors as well.

Its not fair when they are both out on the floor and they are both sitting in the high post just waiting to take a long jumper, leaving no big man inside to rebound.

Even when Perk is on the floor with either Garnett or Rasheed its still not fair having him down low alone and having them deep on the outside leaving poor Perk all alone down low to rebound.

Garnett and Rasheed must balance their games and go to the hoop more for low post offensive moves so they can also help out on the offensive boards.

I agree this is something that Doc is responsible to correct and should hopefully be bale to do so easily and quickly.

I expect that they are embarrassed about this, and i believe that PP will be crashing the boards tonight. He seemed to be doing it all year, but it didn’t show up last night.

Although I’d rather lose to other good teams than to lay eggs against crap like we did last year.

Offensively, the Celts philosophically don’t crash the boards, as they focus on getting back in transition, a good idea for this team, especially when playing against teams that like to run like the Hawks.

Defensively, a big problem last night, and can be for a great help defensive team, is that when the bigs rotated to help the penetration, their guy was free to clean up the glass. As Doc said, the guards have to rotate down and box out, which is not real instinctive. I believe they will emphasize this moving forward and we will see more support rebounding in the games to come.

1986 : Celts dominate
1987 : Injuries prevent repeat
1988 : Aging team goes out quietly

2008 : Celts dominate
2009 : Injuries prevent repeat
2010 : Aging team………..

The reason why the Celtics are doing so poorly with offensive rebounding is directly related to their offensive structure. Garnett plays outwide; so does Wallace – even Perkins is often out around top of the key receiving passes as part of the rotation.As long as the three-pointer remains a primary option, offensive rebounding will be lacking. Not so sure about defensive rebounding – maybe a product of defensive set – team defense, constant switching may leave bigs out of position – I know Garnett is constantly straying away from inside to outside. So the issue is whether poor rebounding caused by (1) lack of rebounding talent’ (2) lack of hustle; or, (3) structural – a negative side effect of a three-point offense and switching defense?

they have got to box out. here is the problem as i see it: they are trying to go after all the rebounds. they are all such great athletes, and were each always the best or nearly the best athlete on the floor at all levels that they are accostomed to being able to just go after it and win the race or the jump. and this becomes a mind game where they try harder and harder to go after it as rebounding becomes a problem. meanwhile they are no longer the best athletes. josh smith and joe johnson and the like can beat garnett and sheed and ray allen to balls. they are the older guys now. they are even at best athletically. thats ok but the strategy has to change. now it has to be about driving their rear ends into people and routing them out, away form the basket and catching boards in front of them like tommy heinsohn says. as a short but strong guy I am quite familiar with this, gotta use strength and the rear end to get guys out of there, forget about out jumping or out quicking people. (talking about the d glass, obviously). and there is a great feeling of pride in accomplishment in rebounding this way, its about dominance and control. it is real hard to jump or move where you want to as an offensive rebounder when the defender has inside position and is concerned more about moving you than about the ball.

and btw, can we get a movement going for keeping rebounding numbers in terms of percentages instead of totals? it should be about percentage of defensive boards sucured. the c’s are always going to give up a few more O boards than average just because we keep opposing field goal percentage so low and that is fine, but the percentage has to be good. that is how those states should be discussed. comparing our O boards to their O boards when they are shooting 35% and we are shooting 60% makes no sense. What is the league average for D board percentage anyway, I would just wildly guess it is upward of 80%, any idea?

oh and I am not talking about offensive boards at all, they are totally different animal. and we can win just fine being just ok or even subpar on the offensive boards but we have got to be good on the defensive boards

yikes, no option for going back an editing entries? sorry about the weird writing errors in there

last year in the playoffs rondo was our best rebounder. obviously he can’t do everything but we missed him on the boards last night. powe was a great offensive rebounder for us and he’s gone