Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Want to bring back excitement? Fix rebounding.

If you look in the official NCAA basketball record book, you will find that they break out rebounding since 1973 as a distinct category. Several years ago I found an explanation of why that happened. It had to do with a dramatic shift in the philosophy regarding rebounding. (I searched the internet diligently but in vain to find it again.) Evidently in the old days teams would have a Designated Rebounder whose job it was to police the boards, and the other players would break lose, presumably for fast breaks. The NCAA saw that the rebounding totals began dropping  dramatically since about 1973, so in order to compare apples to apples, they brought in the special category. That is interesting, because it is the ONLY category in which they do that. They do not break out scoring or steals or blocks, etc. To show how much rebounding has dropped, note that of the top 25 all-time single season rebounds/game leaders, the most recent was Artis Gilmore in 1970. That was 45 years ago.

So, if we make the assumption that the fast break is critical to bringing back the excitement of basketball - and I think that is a very valid assumption -  what can we do to help that along? Fix rebounding. Abandon the "team rebounding" concept and go back to the DR (Designated Rebounder) system. It is problematical if any coach would be willing to do that in this age of the 3-point shot, with more boards bounding out farther on the court; but even if they would be willing to take that risk, it would mean a complete shift in coaching philosophy. You cannot start a classic fast break on a consistent basis unless your guards release as a matter of course, but will coaches do that? Do they have enough confidence in their big man to get the boards? Will they take the risk of not getting some of the longer rebounds?

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