Brooklyn Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn understands that his team struggles in the rebounding department and any other department related to size. On most nights, Brooklyn is usually going to be out-rebounded and to be out-scored when it comes to points in the paint. However, instead of lamenting that fact, Vaughn is trying to find ways for his team to overcome those flaws.
In Sunday’s 122-120 win over the Denver Nuggets, while Brooklyn played well enough to win, they had some deficiencies that could have cost them the victory. For one, the Nuggets out-rebounded the Nets 49-28 and Denver had 15 offensive rebounds which is a lot of offensive rebounds for a winning team to give up.
While starting center Nic Claxton and backup Nerlens Noel aren’t short guys, they are thin and that hinders their ability to keep up on the glass with the bigger players in the NBA like Nikola Jokic. However, to account to that, Brooklyn has been employing a gang-rebounding strategy where the big will just focus on boxing out while the other players will go for the rebound. Vaughn spoke after the game about how the Nets try to make up for their flaws to win basketball games:
“Yeah, it (the rebounding disparity) was ugly. And, that’s gonna be our challenge some nights is how can we balance that out? And, so I think we balanced it out tonight by our assists so you take it on the other end of the floor. We were able to spread that thing around, spray the basketball to multiple people. I think we had seven people in double figures. Spencer (Dinwiddie) 16 assists, unbelievable. So, that combats it a little bit and then being able to turn guys over. 15 turnovers I mean, we were active, we can take advantage of some of those and finish in transition a little bit better. But, to produce some means we’re active, and we’re trying to cut into those rebounds.”
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