Kidd to Mavs

[SniperSB23]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

I was hoping you would say that. Defensive rebounds are valid not total rebounds as you show. The fact is that Ewing was by far the best defensive rebounder of the era by evidenced of his defensive rebound %. DR% is the percentage of available defensive rebounds a player grabbed while he was on the floor. During the 1990's Ewing was in the top 5 every year except the year he DNQ because he only played 26 games. Hakeem was in the top 5 one time when he was a rookie and as his offense developed his defensive rebounding numbers dropped dramatically. Robinson was never better than 9th and a few years didnt make the top 20. And keep in mind that Ewing played with Oakley for some of that period when Oakley was strictly a rebounder and surely took away opportunities from Ewing.

Defensive awards and teams are nothing but popularity contests much like the Gold Gloves in baseball.

Still over their careers the difference is less than 1% which can easily be accounted for by having a good rebounding guard like Drexler as a teammate. Ewing had Oakley but Olajuwon also played part of his career with Barkley who stole tons of rebounds. Personally I think the best statistic would be percent of offensive rebounds that the person you are responsible for gets. If Ewing had a perfect boxout everytime and someone else on his team grabbed the rebound then that is far more valuable than what percentage he actually comes up with the rebound. Same with Olajuwon. Unfortunately no such statistic exists that I know of.