The curse of the bunny – OKC Thunder lose to Celts: 5 takeaways

Rebounding effort lacking:

The disparity in rebounding is head scratching. This Celtics crew has copious lengthy wings but they are definitively smaller in the frontcourt than most clubs. They certainly shouldn’t be winning any rebounding battles against the much taller OKC Thunder crew.

Factor in each of the Thunder guards did their part with SGA (6), Schroder (7) and CP3 (5) pulling down more than their fair share of boards. They out boarded their positional counterparts and Steven Adams did his part.

So how do the undersized Celtics out rebound the Thunder by nine? In this game, it was Jayson Tatum and Gordon Hayward pulling down 21 rebounds from the starting forward positions. Because the Thunder elects to play three guards it means the small forward is somewhat undersized. While SGA has upped his rebounding effort it also means others need to pitch in and do more. With Gallo spreading the floor he’s not in a position to rebound on the offensive glass as much.

In terms of what that could mean especially when the Thunder face opponents with more length is the team needs to adopt a ‘rebound by committee’ strategy and possibly the club should look at adding some rebounding assistance via the buy-out market.