According to NBA.com stats, the Grizzlies allowed the Pels to grab a smidge over 28% of the available rebounds, which would have been good for 15th best offensive rebound percentage all of last season. For this season it actually ranks 18th, with the obvious caveat that everyone is only one game into the season at this point. The 11 offensive boards we gave up was literally our average from last year, even before Adam’s injury.
This is not to say that we don’t suck at rebounding, more that people should probably wait a bit before declaring us the worst rebounding team and blaming that as the reason we lost this game. We lost for a variety of reasons: couldn’t hit a 3 to save our lives outside of Bane (if we shoot our average from last year of 35% we hit 3 more threes), we went 3 of 18 on transition shot attempts, and credit to the Pels they just flat out made their shots.
It’s kind of wild how everyone thought Tillman was going to be who holds us back, but he kept our numbers from being embarrassing. The depth behind him and Jaren was another story, though.