12 rebounds is really a lot for Brook Lopez, tying a season-high, in fact. But before you get all excited about how maybe he isn’t one of the “worst” rebounding centers in the league, remember that he basically had no choice but to grab the rebounds that he did. The Rockets didn’t play anyone this game who was taller than 6’2″; there was no way any of them were going to grab any rebounds with him in even the general area. Houston got outrebounded by 29, to further illustrate the point.
And yet they won? Andrea Bargnani was right, there’s a reason they don’t call it “Reboundball”.
The Bucks, to their credit, realized that Lopez was probably going to be more effective in the paint for this particular matchup. I love this dude, and I love his threes, but you know what I loved for years and years before he came to the Bucks? His interior scoring game. He’s got a lot of moves down there (including the rip-through which I thought the league did away with a few years ago, Kevin Martin better be collecting royalties), and tonight, he got to use them.
Meanwhile, while the Bucks were attacking the paint, the Rockets were launching threes at a league-integrity-compromising rate. 61 triples attempted, that has to be some sort of record for a non-OT game. This was a battle of two diametrically opposed teams, and for now, it looks the analytics nerds win out. Who needs bigmen when you can have more smallmen who can shoot threes?