OKC Thunder: 3 season goals for Justin Jackson in 2020-21

Crash the boards

Through all the trades which have been made the OKC Thunder have lost a lot of their production from last season. Of the players traded away, they lost four of their top five rebounders. These players accounted for 24.4 rebounds per game.

This is more than half the 42.9 rebounds the Thunder collected on average per game last season. Some of this production is going to be taken up by the incoming veteran center Al Horford but there will be plenty of rebounds to go around for those who have the hunger for them.

With so few players returning from last season there needs to be a new rotation established. Doing the dirty work of fighting in the paint for rebounds will go a long way to helping players establish themselves in this rotation for this season and potentially years to come.

Jackson has only averaged 2.6 rebounds per game for his career to date. However, these numbers have been on established teams, not a team that wants to see what a player can do when they don’t have others already established on the roster ahead of them.

He was able to average a little over 4.5 rebounds per game in his final season in college. This means there is some potential for growth in this area.