L.A. Ate All of Orlando's Rebounds

Among the myriad failures begotten by Orlando's Game 1 suck was a bad effort on the defensive glass. This is unusual, as the Magic ended the regular season as the third best defensive rebounding team in the league, with Dwight Howard's singular gravity allowing an otherwise slight roster to control the glass.

Before the game, Magic GM Otis Smith emphasized the importance of team rebounding in a chat with FanHouse's Matt Steinmetz. "Everybody has to rebound. [...] We have a tendency to rely on [Howard] a little too much. He can use help on the boards from time to time." Obviously, that did not happen.

L.A. pulled 15 offensive rebounds in 46 opportunities. The Lakers were one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the league this season -- No. 3, to be exact. But the team far overachieved by those regular season standards, even moreso when accounting for Orlando's defensive rebounding strength. Take a look.



This is the pie chart for each team's regular season performance in this sector. Orlando rebounded nearly 76 percent of all defensive rebound opportunities, a great figure. L.A. rebounded 29.4 percent of its offensive glass chances, an equally great figure. But both cannot hold in a head-to-head match-up -- you'll notice 75.9 percent and 29.4 percent add up to 105.3 percent. Unless Orlando uses its moniker to conjure up a few extra balls, that can't hold. Either L.A. will underperform its season mark, or Orlando will.

But we'd expect the result to fall with that contested zone. If L.A. wins the offensive rebound battle from this perspective, maybe they'd end up with a max of 29.4 percent of the opportunities (which would have been 13 or 14 offensive rebounds). If Orlando wins, maybe they sneak up to 75.9 percent, allowing only 11 offensive rebounds for L.A. Those would be reasonable results, given the strengths in this sector for each team.

But even that didn't happen.



Those rebounds in the contested range -- some 5.3 percent of the opportunities -- were taken by L.A. But that wasn't enough to sate Andrew Bynum, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom. They ate more. Just by meeting their season average, L.A. would be cutting into Orlando's expected defensive rebounding. But they went even beyond that, which is a bit nutty. A bit frightening, for Orlando.

And while these end up being quite small numbers -- a rebound here, a rebound there -- in what was a 100-75 blow-out, it matters. Beyond Orlando's screaming offensive problems in Game 1, we saw L.A.'s offense run circles around the Magic, shooting a great clip and rarely losing the ball. On top of all that, L.A. found extra opportunities off the glass. Maybe the bad box-out positioning didn't matter in this lopsided affair. But when we have a close one in Game 2, or Game 3, or Game 7 ... then it will matter. Every carom will matter. And right now, L.A. has a severe advantage in a segment of the game Orlando expected to dominate. Can the Magic fight back?