Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
One thing I will add, just in relation to this, is I've seen a few people (mostly on Twitter) saying that thank God we've acquired Adams because Zion is a terrible defensive rebounder.
I need those people to re-watch the games he played in last year, and then compare them to the games he played at Duke. As an NBA rookie, Zion averaged 13.7% DREB. In Duke, he averaged about 18.0% DREB. What was the difference?
The most obvious difference was a scheme issue. At Duke, Zion was in the paint the majority of the time, and therefore when there was a DREB to grab, he was there to grab it. For us, Gentry purposefully had Zion away from the paint so that when a large rebounding guard like Lonzo or Hart grabbed the board, Zion was already 90% of the way to the hoop in transition. It reduced Zion's rebounding numbers, but granted him a bunch of super easy transition buckets.
This is one example of why you can't just look at box score stats and say ''oh well Zion isn't a good rebounder''. The scheme purposefully reduced his defensive rebounding opportunities in exchange for scoring, knowing we had other personnel who could do that job.
Whether SVG follows that plan or institutes his own methods remains to be seen, but the idea that Adams was acquired because Zion is a dreadful rebounder is just a terrible misunderstanding.