No rebounds, no rings. That was the one-liner Pat Riley would give to the Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s when he was their head coach. They were never a monstrous rebounding team, but with Riley emphasizing rebounding, they won five NBA championships during that decade and four during his head coaching tenure.
Today’s Lakers appear to have a championship-caliber core, but their roster is incomplete. In particular, they lack size and beef up front, and the Minnesota Timberwolves exposed that deficiency in the first round of this year’s NBA playoffs.
Minnesota defeated the Lakers in five games while badly outrebounding them throughout the series. Game 5, which they lost by a final score of 103-96, was perhaps the most egregious example of the Lakers losing the battle of the boards. In that contest, they were outrebounded 54-37 and gave up 18 offensive rebounds and 20 second-chance points. Rudy Gobert, who averaged 12.0 points and 10.9 rebounds a game during the regular season, looked like a future Hall of Famer with 27 points and 24 rebounds.
Forward Rui Hachimura stated the obvious afterward — that Los Angeles needs frontcourt players capable of boxing out and grabbing rebounds at a high level.
“We need somebody to get rebounds,” Hachimura said. “I got to be one of them, of course. I can’t just be face-to-face boxing out Gobert the whole game. I can’t get a rebound. That’s the whole thing. He’s 7’2” [with a] 7’5” wingspan, whatever. He’s a big man.
“The problem was, I think because we tried to help on Gobert, put two guys on him and the other guys were diving into offensive rebounds and it’s easy…So I think that was the game for us.”
Hachimura played very well offensively in the last two games of the series with a combined 46 points on 18-of-32 field-goal shooting in those contests, but rebounding has never been his strong suit. L.A. badly needs a starting-caliber center who makes rebounding and defense his top priorities, but if it lands such a player, its chances of winning the NBA championship should dramatically rise once next season starts.