Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

Who would of known that Bill Withers was talking about the Utah Jazz’s rebounding?
In my opinion, the three most important parts of basketball are, (in this order) Defense, Rebounding, Executing an offense. If you can succeed on a high level on each and EVERYONE of those parts, you will be a championship caliber team.
To wins games you have to outscore you opponent. It’s that simple. How do you do it then? Well like I said, first you need to be able to get defensive stops, and when you get those you HAVE to REBOUND. Otherwise you will have to stop your opponent on the defensive side AGAIN. If you can rebound, you will then get the chance to score.
This season we have a completely different team. We lost our leading scorer, rebounder, and injurer in Boozer. Best 3pt threat in Korver, and had another critical loss in both Offense and Defense when starting Matthews left for Portland. But as we all know, the front office came up big with picking up low-post machine Big Al Jefferson, defensive stopper Raja Bell, solid backups with Elson and Watson, and even did a well job drafting while choosing Hayward and stealing Evans.
So as of this point in the season what are the past and present team’s differences? Well for one, the Jazz are a MUCH better defensive team.
In a matter of fact, (according to stat machine David Locke) the Jazz are #1 in FG% Defense. Also #1 in defending the three point shot.
But the other difference between this team and last years is we are not NEARLY as good as a rebounding team. It not’s just the fact that Memo is out and we lost Booz. Al Jefferson, Andrei Kirilenko and Raja Bell are all at career low defensive rebounding rates.
The Jazz have always been a solid rebounding team, and it was a common site that we would win the rebounding battle night in and night out. However this year, it is completely opposite. We are getting killed on the boards to teams who aren’t known for rebounding and stuff.
I think the longer this team plays together, our defense will naturally improve even more. And I don’t doubt it at all that our offense will catch on and again become one of the best in the NBA. But even with that, we will continue to lose some games if we can’t rebound.
There are two main parts to rebounding. The fundamentals, and having a knack for being around the ball. If you can do both, you will be able to rebound, even if you give up height or weight (Millsap). And right now the Jazz are lacking from both sides. It frustrates me to see the other team get sooo many easy put backs, and multiple 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th chances to score. To put it simple, our lack of rebounds is wasting our much improved D.
Here is a list of team’s we have lost to this year, and the results of rebounding from the time we played them this year, and the time’s from last year.

Team	Reb. Dif. 09-10 (Average)	Reb. Dif. 10-11
Nuggets	+1	-2
Suns	+6.25	+1
Warriors	+16	-6
Thunder	+.25	-5
Spurs	-.75	-15

Ok, now I don’t think rebounding was the main reason for the Nuggets and Suns’ losses, but obviously we shouldn’t get outrebounded by the Warriors, and not by 15 to the Spurs. My point is clear. REBOUND.
Because, it’s not warm when she’s away.