20 points is all well and good for Jaren Jackson Jr., that’s a nice point total for him these days. What I’m concerned about is the “4” I see for him in the rebounds column of the boxscore. Four? Rebounds? During the whole game? Okay, so not the whole game, because he only played 34 minutes, but still. Four! I honestly think that you could put me in an NBA game right now and I could get four rebounds. You’d have to play me 48 minutes, and I’d have to statpad like Westbrook and spend all my time hanging around the rim to get them, but I could do it. If you doubt me, remember: rebounding is all about hustling, and if there’s one thing DownToBuck can do, it’s hustle.
Jackson had a lot of advantages over me when it comes to rebounding, so he has no excuse. He’s tall. He’s athletic. He can jump. He plays generally closer to the basket. Did I mention that he’s tall? That’s the main one. He’s so tall that 10 rebounds should happen for him almost by default.
My first thought was that he was being a good teammate and letting Jonas Valanciunas (who sucks at rebounding) grab a few that should’ve been his. But Valanciunas only had four rebounds himself! Was there anyone on the Grizzlies doing any rebounding whatsoever? A closer analysis of the boxscore shows that Jae Crowder was statpadding, grabbing 10 boards even though he’s just some random wing player who should really leave the rebounding to the bigs. Just another reason to mildly dislike him, I guess.