Flipside of Kevin Love's out of space rebounding

[re49gb_2gho32fp]

Kevin is a great player. But there are ways he may train and contribute even more in upgrading the game of this team, like several other players need as well.

[shangrila]

Love is seriously the last player on the team whose development we need to worry about.

[thinktank]

It is kind of true that KLove's priority is rebounds, no matter what and if he has to take it away from a teammate, it should be fine as long as the ball is secured.

But KLove does leave his man a lot of times just to get in position for rebound. Then again, Our team in general can't play defense properly. The only one average to above average in defense is Brewer. Just don't let him shoot a lot lol.

You know, I used to think this was a bad thing when Love left a shooter to sandbag it for a rebound (specifically, the Laker game where he left Odom open. I still think that was stupid, in fact). However, if you think back, KG--believe it or not--did the same thing quite a bit, too. In fact, if you play basketball, you know that sometimes you can tell that a player is going to miss and that not defending the shot is sometimes a decent gamble (can freak the shooter out, saves energy, puts you in position for a rebound). I'm not saying this is a good strategy all the time. I'm saying pay attention to how often Love employs the strategy and how often it works.

Crazy? Maybe. Savvy? More often than I once thought.

[big3_8_19_21]

Kevin is a great player. But there are ways he may train and contribute even more in upgrading the game of this team, like several other players need as well.

Of course there are things he can improve on, but his rebounding is really the least of his worries in that regard.

[younggunsmn]

There are times it gets really annoying when the other team gets an easy bucket because Love is more concerned with rebounding position than help defense. But the guy knows we are often better off with him securing the rebound and denying second chance points than challenging a shot. As he gets more experience that line will get clearer.

Darko's rebounding suffers because he is always challenging shots, but the entire team benefits when he alters a shot into a miss (love's rebounding #'s in particular). That doesn't make him a poor rebounder. There are times it definitely costs Darko rebounding position, but he knows the team is better off with him challenging shots than digging for rebounding position, and Love is going to clean up a lot of those misses. Most guys in the NBA are talented enough that if you give them an uncontested shot inside 15 feet they are going to make 70% of them. I don't think you can undersell how important it is to have guys who can alter shots and get shooter out of their comfort zone.

It's a question of role and tools. The first priority is getting in a shooter's face/space and causing a miss. If you can't do that effectively, the next priority is boxing out your man and rebounding your area. 3rd priority is chasing the ball off the rim. Love's improved dramatically this year, and as he gets older hopefully he can learn to defend more effectively while still being a solid rebounder.

Unless you are guarding Ben Wallace there's never an excuse for not at least getting a hand up on a jump shooter.