Love is a fine rebounder. For a 20 year old he understands postitioning amazingly well. Plus his much touted outlet passing ability is starting to come into play.
http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-38-89/Pop-Quiz--Rookies-Can-Rebound.htmlPop Quiz: Rookies Can Rebound
January 27, 2009 12:15 PM
OK, so if you take:
* Every rookie who has ever played in the NBA since 1946 ...
* Weed out everyone who played less than twenty minutes per game ...
* And sort them by who gets the highest percentage of total rebounds while on the court ...
You'll find that two current rookies are in the top ten all time. Which is really something.
One of them is Greg Oden, who is ninth at the moment. He's ahead of people like Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Another 2008-2009 rookie, however, is currently third all time. By this measure he's ahead of Shaquille O'Neal, Charles Oakley, Buck Williams, and Bill Walton (trailing only Clifford Ray and Larry Smith, who were three years older in their rookie years than the buy I'm talking about).
This rookie is also better known for doing something besides rebounding.
But TrueHoop reader Larry has pointed out, and Basketball-Reference.com confirms, this player is certainly showing that he's a special rebounder.
So ... who is he?
Answer after the jump.
Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Here's the evidence. Kevin Love
His total rebounding percentage is greater than his age, which just about never happens. He's only 20, but he grabs 21.3 percent of the rebounds while he's on the court.
He's also smaller and less athletic than a lot of the players he's competing against for those loose balls. And he's best known as a passer (and trick-shot artist).
How does he do it?
There are probably a lot of contributing factors. Maybe he reads angles better than many. Maybe he is well-schooled in the dark arts of rebound positioning. Certainly he has good hands, and can possess a high percentage of the balls he touches.
But I can tell you this: If you train with David Thorpe at the Pro Training Center at IMG, and tell him you want to grab more rebounds, the first thing he will do is try to get you to see that you have more rebounding opportunities than you think you do. This has nothing to do with your size, and everything to do with your mental approach to rebounding.
Thorpe's thought is that the best way for most players to get more balls is to get it in their heads that they can go and get balls that fall out of their area.
Think about it this way. If you're shooting alone in a gym, you can run down rebounds all over the floor. It's normal. You can cover a lot of ground!
But in games, a lot of players have a certain mental block. All those players in the way! Most only really fight for balls that come to their area. If you're on the left block, are you going to run all the way to the right elbow to grab a ball coming off the rim?
For most players, the answer is no.
But for rebound maniacs like Kevin Love, the answer is yes.
No matter where he starts out, he'll compete for just about every ball that comes off that rim. It's a mentality.
(And, incidentally, this reality is why rebounding statistics from college are often more useful than you'd think in the NBA. John Hollinger can explain this better than I can, but my understanding is that many good college rebounders, who were a bit undersized, have historically been projected to be unable to rebound well against the NBA's bigger competition. Yet several of them have proven otherwise. What do they have in common? They are players who apply their rebounding skills more times per game than other players. If you're trying to get them all the time, you'll get a lot of them.)
Love is listed at 6-10 and 260. And he has been dinged by scouts for his lack of athleticism. But his rookie season is showing that he can sure grab some rebounds!
UPDATE: A look at team's overall rebounding rates while different players are on the floor. Oden and Love still shine. Love makes the single biggest difference of any player in the league, with his team improving more than nine percent grabbing offensive rebounds while he's on the floor. (This measure weeds out players who are stealing rebounds from teammates.)
While there is no doubt that Love has the mental makeup to go get rebounds, I actually think your quote about the "dark arts" of rebounding is closer to what is happening with his game.
If you pay attention to him on the boards, he is less concerned with jumping high as he is about preventing his man from jumping to the ball; or, at the very least, jumping to the highest point that he himself needs to get to in order to bring down the goods.
His bag of dark arts tricks is filled to the brim with the type of moves rec players see at the Y from the old guy who likes to make believe that nobody knows he played D1 ball back in the 70s. From pretending that his man has him anchored to the floor (which draws fouls) to the one arm in the air trick (in which he overplays the fact that his arm is being held down; also a foul magnet move) to the slight hip bump to always keeping his hands in the air when the ball comes off the rim, the guy is well, well versed in the dark arts of rebounding.
He also has the added benefit of playing next to a guy who consistently draws double teams while shooting close to the bucket. The Wolves are grabbing between 30-40% of their own misses in recent games. With Jefferson upping his game, Love is often presented with even less resistance on his way to the offensive glass. If you add in his clearly superior work ethic and motor, and if you factor in his double black belt in rebounding, there is actually some room to believe that he can improve on the offensive glass, as more attention is being paid to Foye and Jefferson than at any other time during the season.
