JawsGT:
I said we needed a rebound-grabber, not a center. Setting aside whether any of our non-Jonas interchangeable PF-Cs (Johnson, Patterson, Hansbrough, Hayes, Bebe) is enough of a center to adequately spell Jonas for all the time that Casey has him off the floor, which of them is actually rebounding at a better rate than our SFs are?
Johnson is still active defensively, but one of the surest signs that his ankles are giving him ongoing trouble is the extent that his rebounding is down noticeably. Patterson, our stretch four, isn't close enough to basket often enough to haul in a lot of offensive rebounds, and doesn't seem to be particularly active in going after defensive ones. Hansbrough is on the floor to be an aggressive man defender and pest; any rebounds we get on top of that are a bonus. Hayes gets floor time for his hortizontal leverage rather than his vertical leapage, and Bebe is going to have to earn his minutes by performing well in the minutes he may never actually get.
Right now, we have a problem with rebounding, and while better team rebounding would go a fair ways to address it, it would be even better to be able to plug in somebody off the bench when we need Jonas on the bench and we are having problems because we are being out-rebounded. If the players who will fix this for us are PFs, we need another PF; if the players that will fix that for us are centers, then yes, we need a center.
I said we needed a rebound-grabber, not a center. Setting aside whether any of our non-Jonas interchangeable PF-Cs (Johnson, Patterson, Hansbrough, Hayes, Bebe) is enough of a center to adequately spell Jonas for all the time that Casey has him off the floor, which of them is actually rebounding at a better rate than our SFs are?
Johnson is still active defensively, but one of the surest signs that his ankles are giving him ongoing trouble is the extent that his rebounding is down noticeably. Patterson, our stretch four, isn't close enough to basket often enough to haul in a lot of offensive rebounds, and doesn't seem to be particularly active in going after defensive ones. Hansbrough is on the floor to be an aggressive man defender and pest; any rebounds we get on top of that are a bonus. Hayes gets floor time for his hortizontal leverage rather than his vertical leapage, and Bebe is going to have to earn his minutes by performing well in the minutes he may never actually get.
Right now, we have a problem with rebounding, and while better team rebounding would go a fair ways to address it, it would be even better to be able to plug in somebody off the bench when we need Jonas on the bench and we are having problems because we are being out-rebounded. If the players who will fix this for us are PFs, we need another PF; if the players that will fix that for us are centers, then yes, we need a center.
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